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AHS Centaur

Hospital ship shipwreck in Queensland, Australia

Australian Hospital Ship (AHS) Centaur was a hospital ship which was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 14 May 1943. Of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard, 268 died, including 63 of the 65 army personnel. The Scottish-built vessel was launched in 1924 as a combination passenger liner and refrigerated cargo ship and operated a trade route between Western Australia and Singapore via the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), carrying passengers, cargo, and livestock. At the start of World War II, Centaur (like all British Merchant Navy vessels) was placed under British Admiralty control, but after being fitted with defensive equipment, was allowed to continue normal operations. In November 1941, the ship rescued German survivors of the engagement between Kormoran and HMAS Sydney. Centaur was relocated to Australia's east coast in October 1942, and used to transport materiel to New Guinea. In January 1943, Centaur was handed over to the Australian military for conversion to a hospital ship, as her small size made her suitable for operating in Maritime Southeast Asia. The refit (including installation of medical facilities and repainting with Red Cross markings) was completed in March, and the ship undertook a trial voyage: transporting wounded from Townsville to Brisbane, then from Port Moresby to Brisbane. After replenishing in Sydney, Centaur embarked the 2/12th Field Ambulance for transport to New Guinea, and sailed on 12 May. Before dawn on 14 May 1943, during her second voyage, Centaur was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine off Moreton Island, Queensland. The majority of the 332 aboard died in the attack; the 64 survivors were discovered 36 hours later. The incident resulted in public outrage as attacking a hospital ship is considered a war crime under the 1907 Hague Convention. Protests were made by the Australian and British governments to Japan and efforts were made to discover the people responsible so they could be tried at a war crimes tribunal. In the 1970s the probable identity of the attacking submarine, I-177, became public. The reason for the attack is unknown; there are theories that Centaur was in breach of the international conventions that should have protected her, that I-177's commander was unaware that Centaur was a hospital ship, or that the submarine commander, Hajime Nakagawa, knowingly attacked a protected vessel. The wreck of Centaur was found on 20 December 2009; a claimed discovery in 1995 has been proven to be a different shipwreck. ## Design and construction ### Original design In early 1923, the Ocean Steamship Company (a subsidiary of Alfred Holt's Blue Funnel Line) decided that a new vessel would be required to replace the ageing Charon on the Western Australia to Singapore trade route. The vessel had to be capable of simultaneously transporting passengers, cargo, and livestock. She also had to be capable of resting on mud flats out of the water as the tidal variance in ports at the northern end of Western Australia was as great as 8 metres (26 ft). Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Greenock was chosen to build Centaur. The keel was laid on 16 November 1923, and the ship was ready for collection by 29 August 1924. Constructed at a cost of £146,750 sterling, Centaur was designed to carry 72 passengers and 450 cattle. Cargo was carried in four holds; the two decks within the hull were primarily for livestock, and could also be used as extra cargo space. The hull of the ship was a 'turret deck' design; decks below the waterline were wider than those above water, and a flat, reinforced hull allowed the ship to rest on the bottom. Centaur was among the first civilian vessels to be equipped with a diesel engine. One of the most visible characteristics was the 35-foot (11 m) smokestack, the extreme size was more a concession to tradition than of practical advantage on a diesel-powered vessel. Her engine was 6-cylinder 4-stroke, single cycle single action diesel engine. It had cylinders of 2415⁄16 inches (64 cm) diameter by 513⁄16 inches (135 cm) stroke. The engine was built by Burmeister & Wain, Copenhagen, Denmark. One of her holds was fitted with refrigeration equipment. The refrigerant was brine and the insulation was cork. The refrigerated hold had a capacity of 3,000 cubic feet (85 m³). In December 1939, Centaur underwent a minor refit in Hong Kong, with a supercharger and a new propeller fitted to the engine. The supercharger broke down in April 1942, and could not be repaired because of equipment shortages and restricted dockyard access caused by World War II. ### Hospital ship refit At the beginning of 1943, Centaur was placed at the disposal of the Australian Department of Defence for conversion to a hospital ship. The conversion was performed by United Ship Services in Melbourne, Australia, and was initially estimated to cost AU£20,000. The cost increased to almost AU£55,000, for a variety of reasons. It was originally intended for the ship to travel between ports in New Guinea and Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Increasing casualty numbers in the New Guinea campaign meant that the hospitals in Queensland would quickly become unable to deal with the quantity of the casualties and the nature of their injuries, so a longer voyage to Sydney was required. The Army demanded that more facilities and conversions be added to the original plans such as expanded bathing and washing facilities, hot water made available to all parts of the ship through installation of a calorifier, the rerouting of all steam pipes away from patient areas, and ventilation arrangements suitable for tropical conditions. The unions representing the ship's crew requested improved living and dining conditions, including new sinks in the food preparation areas and the replacement of flooring in the quarters and mess rooms. When AHS Centaur was relaunched on 12 March 1943, she was equipped with an operating theatre, dispensary, two wards (located on the former cattle decks), and a dental surgery, along with quarters for seventy five crew and sixty five permanent Army medical staff. To maintain the ship's mean draught of 6.1 metres (20 ft), 900 tons of ironstone were distributed through the cargo holds as ballast. AHS Centaur was capable of voyages of 18 days before resupply and could carry just over 250 bedridden patients. ## Operational history ### 1924 to 1938 Centaur was allocated the United Kingdom Official Number 147275 and the Code Letters KHHC. Her port of registry was Liverpool. When Centaur entered service at the end of 1924, the Fremantle–Java– Singapore trade route was being serviced by two other Blue Funnel Line vessels; Gorgon (which remained in service until 1928) and Charon (which Centaur was replacing). Centaur's route ran from Fremantle up the Western Australian coast calling at Geraldton, Carnarvon, Onslow, Point Samson, Port Hedland, Broome, and Derby then to the Bali Strait, Surabaya, Semarang, Batavia, and Singapore. Centaur operated as a cross between a tramp steamer and a freight liner; she travelled a set route, but stops at ports along the route varied between journeys. From 1928 until sometime in the 1930s, Centaur remained alone on her route, but the increase in trade along this route prompted Blue Funnel Line to reassign Gorgon and assign the new Charon to work alongside Centaur. Following the change in Code Letters in 1934, Centaur was allocated the Code Letters GMQP. A highlight of Centaur'''s pre-war career was the rescue of the 385 ton Japanese whale-chaser Kyo Maru II in November 1938. Kyo Maru II had developed boiler problems while returning from the Antarctic and was drifting towards the Houtman Abrolhos Archipelago, where she was in danger of being wrecked by the reefs in the area. Centaur responded to the distress signal and towed Kyo Maru II to Geraldton. ### 1939 to 1942 As a vessel of the British Merchant Navy, Centaur was affected by the British Parliament's 1939 outline of how the Merchant Navy would respond to the declaration of war, primarily submission to the Admiralty in all matters excluding the crewing and management of vessels. Following the outbreak of World War II on 3 September 1939, Centaur was equipped with a stern-mounted 4-inch (100 mm) Mark IX naval gun and two .303 Vickers machine guns located on the bridge wings for protection against Axis warships and aircraft. She was also fitted with port and starboard paravanes and degaussing equipment for protection against naval mines. The weapons were removed during the hospital ship refit, although the anti-mine countermeasures remained. Centaur initially remained in service on her original trade route. On 26 November 1941, a damaged lifeboat carrying 62 Kriegsmarine (German navy) sailors and officers was spotted by an aircraft looking for the missing Australian cruiser ; the aircraft directed Centaur to the lifeboat. Upon encountering the lifeboat, food was lowered to its occupants, and one person was allowed on board to explain the situation. Initially posing as a Norwegian merchant navy officer, the man quickly revealed that he was the first officer of the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran and that the lifeboat contained German survivors from Kormoran's battle with HMAS Sydney seven days earlier, including Captain Theodor Detmers. Unwilling to leave the shipwrecked men at sea, but afraid of having his ship captured by the Germans, Centaur's master decided to take the lifeboat in tow, after allowing nine wounded men aboard. During the tow towards Carnarvon, Western Australia, the lifeboat was swamped and partially sunk by rough seas, so two of Centaur's lifeboats were lowered to carry the Germans. On arrival in Carnarvon, the Germans were relocated to the number one cargo hold, where they were joined by another hundred Kormoran survivors collected by other ships, plus forty Australian Army guards, which were then transported by Centaur to Fremantle. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the Malayan Campaign on 7 December 1941, Centaur's run was curtailed to Broome, Western Australia. On 6 October 1942, Centaur was ordered to sail to Queensland, where she began runs between the east coast of Australia and New Guinea, carrying materiel. ### 1943 With the commencement of hostilities between Japan and the British Empire, it became clear that the three hospital ships currently serving Australia—Manunda, Wanganella, and Oranje—would not be able to operate in the shallow waters typical of Maritime Southeast Asia, so a new hospital ship was required. Of the Australian Merchant Navy vessels able to operate in this region, none were suitable for conversion to a hospital ship, and a request to the British Ministry of Shipping placed Centaur at the disposal of the Australian military on 4 January 1943. The conversion work began on 9 January and Centaur was commissioned as an Australian Hospital Ship on 1 March. During her conversion, Centaur was painted with the markings of a hospital ship as detailed in Article 5 of the tenth Hague Convention of 1907 ("Adaptation to Maritime War of the Principles of the Geneva Convention"); white hull with a green band interspersed by three red crosses on each flank of the hull, white superstructure, multiple large red crosses positioned so that the ship's status would be visible from both sea and air, and an identification number (for Centaur, 47) on her bows. At night, the markings were illuminated by a combination of internal and external lights. Data on the ship's markings and the layout of identifying structural features was provided to the International Committee of the Red Cross during the first week of February 1943, who passed this on to the Japanese on 5 February. This information was also circulated and promoted by the press and media. Centaur entered operation as a hospital ship on 12 March 1943. The early stages of Centaur's first voyage as a hospital ship were test and transport runs; the initial run from Melbourne to Sydney resulted in the Master, Chief Engineer, and Chief Medical Officer composing a long list of defects requiring attention. Following repairs, she conducted a test run, transporting wounded servicemen from Townsville to Brisbane to ensure that she was capable of fulfilling the role of a medical vessel. Centaur was then tasked with delivering medical personnel to Port Moresby, New Guinea, and returning to Brisbane with Australian and American wounded along with a few wounded Japanese prisoners of war. Arriving in Sydney on 8 May 1943, Centaur was re-provisioned at Darling Harbour, before departing for Cairns, Queensland on 12 May 1943. From there, her destination was again New Guinea. On board at the time were 74 civilian crew, 53 Australian Army Medical Corps personnel (including 8 officers), 12 female nurses from the Australian Army Nursing Service, 192 soldiers from the 2/12th Field Ambulance, and one Torres Strait ship pilot. Most of the female nurses had transferred from the hospital ship Oranje, and the male Army personnel assigned to the ship aboard were all medical staff. During the loading process, there was an incident when the ambulance drivers attached to the 2/12th attempted to bring their rifles and personal supplies of ammunition aboard. This was met with disapproval from Centaur's Master and Chief Medical Officer, and raised concerns amongst the crew and wharf labourers that Centaur would be transporting military supplies or commandos to New Guinea: the rifles were not allowed on board until Centaur's Master received official reassurance that the ambulance drivers were allowed to carry weapons under the 10th Hague Convention (specifically Article 8), as they were used "for the maintenance of order and the defence of the wounded." The remaining cargo was searched by the crew and labourers for other weapons and munitions. ## Sinking At approximately 4:10 am on 14 May 1943, while on her second run from Sydney to Port Moresby, Centaur was torpedoed by an unsighted submarine. The torpedo struck the portside oil fuel tank approximately 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) below the waterline, creating a hole 8 to 10 metres (26 to 33 ft) across, igniting the fuel, and setting the ship on fire from the bridge aft. Many of those on board were immediately killed by concussion or perished in the inferno. Centaur quickly took on water through the impact site, rolled to port, then sank bow-first, submerging completely in less than three minutes. The rapid sinking prevented the deployment of lifeboats, although two broke off from Centaur as she sank, along with several damaged liferafts. According to the position extrapolated by Second Officer Gordon Rippon from the 4:00 am dead reckoning position, Centaur was attacked approximately 24 nautical miles (44 km; 28 mi) east-northeast of Point Lookout, North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. Doubts were initially cast on the accuracy of both the calculated point of sinking and the dead reckoning position, but the 2009 discovery of the wreck found both to be correct, Centaur located within 1 nautical mile (1.9 km; 1.2 mi) of Rippon's coordinates. ### Survivors Of the 332 people on board, 64 were rescued. Most of the crew and passengers were asleep at the time of attack and had little chance to escape. It was estimated that up to 200 people may have been alive at the time Centaur submerged. Several who made it off the ship later died from shrapnel wounds or burns; others were unable to find support and drowned. The survivors spent 36 hours in the water, using barrels, wreckage, and the two damaged lifeboats for flotation. During this time, they drifted approximately 19.6 nautical miles (36.3 km; 22.6 mi) north east of Centaur's calculated point of sinking and spread out over an area of 2 nautical miles (3.7 km; 2.3 mi). The survivors saw at least four ships and several aircraft, but could not attract their attention. At the time of rescue, the survivors were in two large and three small groups, with several more floating alone. Amongst those rescued were Sister Ellen Savage, the only surviving nurse from 12 aboard; Leslie Outridge, the only surviving doctor from 18 aboard; Gordon Rippon, second officer and most senior surviving crew member; and Richard Salt, the Torres Strait ship pilot. In 1944, Ellen Savage was presented with the George Medal for providing medical care, boosting morale, and displaying courage during the wait for rescue. ### Rescue On the morning of 15 May 1943, the American destroyer USS Mugford departed Brisbane to escort the 11,063 ton New Zealand freighter Sussex on the first stage of the latter's trans-Tasman voyage. At 2:00 pm, a lookout aboard Mugford reported an object on the horizon. Around the same time, a Royal Australian Air Force Avro Anson of No. 71 Squadron, flying ahead on anti-submarine watch, dived towards the object. The aircraft returned to the two ships and signalled that there were shipwreck survivors in the water requiring rescue. Mugford's commanding officer ordered Sussex to continue alone as Mugford collected the survivors. Marksmen were positioned around the ship to shoot sharks, and sailors stood ready to dive in and assist the wounded. Mugford's medics inspected each person as they came aboard and provided necessary medical care. The American crew learned from the first group of survivors that they were from the hospital ship Centaur. At 2:14 pm, Mugford made contact with the Naval Officer-in-Charge in Brisbane, and announced that the ship was recovering survivors from Centaur at , the first that anyone in Australia had knowledge of the attack on the hospital ship. The rescue of the 64 survivors took an hour and twenty minutes, although Mugford remained in the area until dark, searching an area of approximately 7 by 14 nautical miles (13 by 26 km; 8 by 16 mi) for more survivors. After darkness fell, Mugford returned to Brisbane, arriving shortly before midnight. Further searches of the waters off North Stradbroke Island were made by USS Helm during the night of 15 May until 6:00 pm on 16 May, and by and four motor torpedo boats from 16 to 21 May, neither search finding more survivors. ### Identifying attacker At the time of the attack, none aboard Centaur witnessed what had attacked the ship. Due to the ship's position, the distance from shore, and the depth, it was concluded that she was torpedoed by one of the Japanese submarines known to be operating off the Australian east coast. Several survivors later claimed to have heard the attacking submarine moving on the surface while they were adrift, and the submarine was seen by the ship's cook, Francis Martin, who was floating alone on a hatch cover, out of sight from the main cluster of survivors. Martin described the submarine to Naval Intelligence following the survivors' return to land; his description matched the profile of a KD7 type Kaidai-class submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy. At the time of the attack, three KD7 Kaidai were operating off Australia's east coast: I-177 under the command of Hajime Nakagawa, I-178 under Hidejiro Utsuki, and I-180 under Toshio Kusaka. None of these submarines survived the war; I-177 was sunk by USS Samuel S. Miles on 3 October 1944, I-178 by USS Patterson on 25 August 1943, and I-180 by USS Gilmore on 26 April 1944. Kusaka and Nakagawa were transferred to other submarines before the loss of I-180 and I-177 respectively, but Utsuki and I-178 were sunk while returning from the patrol off the coast of Australia. In December 1943, following official protests, the Japanese government issued a statement formally denying responsibility for the sinking of Centaur. Records provided by the Japanese following the war also did not acknowledge responsibility. Although Centaur's sinking was a war crime, no one was tried for sinking the hospital ship. Investigations into the attack were conducted between 1944 and 1948, and included the interrogation of the commanders of the submarines operating in Australian waters at the time, their superiors, plus junior officers and crewmen from the submarines who had survived the war. Several of the investigators suspected that Nakagawa and I-177 were most likely responsible, but they were unable to establish this beyond reasonable doubt, and the Centaur case file was closed on 14 December 1948 without any charges laid. Historians were divided on which submarine was responsible. In Royal Australian Navy, 1942–1945, published in 1968 as part of the series detailing the Australian official history of World War II, George Hermon Gill concluded that either I-178 or I-180 was responsible; the former was more likely as she had served in Australian waters the longest of any Japanese submarine at the time, but had claimed no kills in the three-month period surrounding Centaur's sinking. In 1972, German military historian Jürgen Rohwer claimed in Chronology of the war at sea that I-177 torpedoed Centaur, based on a Japanese report stating that I-177 had attacked a ship on 14 May 1943 in the area the hospital ship had sunk. Japanese Rear Admiral Kaneyoshi Sakamoto, who had shown Rohwer the report, stated that Nakagawa and I-177 were responsible for the attack on Centaur in his 1979 book History of Submarine Warfare. As an official history of the Japanese Navy, Sakamoto's work was considered to be official admission of the attacking submarine's identity. Subsequently, most sources assumed as fact Nakagawa's and I-177's role in the loss of Centaur. Nakagawa, who died in 1991, refused to speak about the attack on Centaur following the war crimes investigation at the end of World War II or even to defend himself or deny the claims made by Rohwer and Sakamoto. ## Reaction ### Public reaction The media were notified of Centaur's sinking on 17 May 1943, but were ordered not to release the news until it had been announced in the South West Pacific Area's General Headquarters dispatch at midday on 18 May, and in Parliament by Prime Minister John Curtin that afternoon. News of the attack made front pages throughout the world, including The Times of London, The New York Times, and the Montreal Gazette. In some newspapers, the news took precedence over the 'Dambuster' raids performed in Europe by No. 617 Squadron RAF. The initial public reaction to the attack on Centaur was one of outrage, significantly different from that displayed following the loss of Australian warships or merchant vessels. As a hospital ship, the attack was a breach of the tenth Hague Convention of 1907, and as such was a war crime. The sinking of Centaur drew strong reactions from both Prime Minister Curtin and General Douglas MacArthur. Curtin stated that the sinking was "an entirely inexcusable act, undertaken in violation of the convention to which Japan is a party and of all the principles of common humanity". MacArthur reflected the common Australian view when he stated that the sinking was an example of Japanese "limitless savagery". Politicians urged the public to use their rage to fuel the war effort, and Centaur became a symbol of Australia's determination to defeat what appeared to be a brutal and uncompromising enemy. The Australian Government produced posters depicting the sinking, which called for Australians to "Avenge the Nurses" by working to produce materiel, purchasing war bonds, or enlisting in the armed forces. People also expressed their sympathy towards the crew, and there were several efforts to fund a new hospital ship. The councillors of Caulfield, Victoria, organised a fund to replace the lost medical equipment, opening with a donation of AU£2,000. Those who worked on Centaur's conversion contributed money towards a replacement, and employees of Ansett Airways pledged to donate an hour's pay towards the fitting out of such a replacement. With some people unable to believe that the Japanese would be so ruthless, rumours began to spread almost immediately after news of the attack was made public. The most common rumour was that Centaur had been carrying munitions or commandos at the time of her sinking, the Japanese being made aware of this before her departure. This stemmed from an incident involving the ambulance drivers' weapons during loading in Sydney. ### Military reaction The attack was universally condemned by Australian servicemen, who commonly believed that the attack on Centaur had been carried out deliberately and in full knowledge of her status. Similar reactions were expressed by other Allied personnel; United States Army Air Forces General George Kenney recalled having to talk a sergeant bombardier out of organising a retaliatory bombing run on a Japanese hospital ship known to be in their area. Six days after the attack on Centaur, a request was made by the Australian Department of Defence that the identification markings and lights be removed from Australian hospital ship Manunda, weapons be installed, and that she begin to sail blacked out and under escort. The conversion was performed, although efforts by the Department of the Navy, the Admiralty, and authorities in New Zealand and the United States of America caused the completed conversion to be undone. The cost of the roundabout work came to £12,500, and kept Manunda out of service for three months. On 9 June 1943, communications between the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the subject of hospital ships contained a section referring to the Manunda incident as a response to the attack on Centaur, with the conclusion that the attack was the work of an irresponsible Japanese commander, and that it would be better to wait until further attacks had been made before considering the removal of hospital ship markings. When the consideration was made that the ambulance drivers' weapons incident just before Centaur's voyage may have been partially responsible for the attack, it led to the tightening of rules regarding who was allowed to travel on a hospital ship. Quasi-medical staff, like repatriation teams, were no longer permitted on hospital ships. Ambulance drivers had to transfer from the regular Army to the Australian Army Medical Corps before they were allowed aboard, although they were still permitted to carry their unloaded weapons and ammunition. ### Official protests After consultation with the Australian armed forces, General MacArthur, the Admiralty, and the Australian Government, an official protest was sent. This was received by the Japanese Government on 29 May 1943. At around the same time, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent a protest on behalf of the major Allied Red Cross organisations to the Japanese Red Cross. On 26 December 1943, a response to the Australian protest arrived. It stated that the Japanese Government had no information justifying the allegation made, and therefore took no responsibility for what happened. The reply counter-protested that nine Japanese hospital ships had been attacked by the Allies, although these claims were directed against the United States, not Australia. Although several later exchanges were made, the lack of progress saw the British Government inform the Australian Prime Minister on 14 November 1944 that no further communications would be made on the loss of Centaur. ## Theories for attack Torpedo attacks in Australian waters were common at this time, with 27 Japanese submarines operating in Australian waters between June 1942 and December 1944. These submarines attacked almost 50 merchant vessels, 20 ships confirmed to be sunk as result of a Japanese attack, plus 9 more unconfirmed. This was part of a concentrated effort to disrupt supply convoys from Australia to New Guinea. Several actions on Centaur's part may have contributed to her demise. Centaur was under orders to sail well out to sea until reaching the Great Barrier Reef; her course keeping her between 50 and 150 nautical miles (90 and 280 km; 60 and 170 mi) from shore. Centaur's Master, believing he had been given a route intended for a merchant vessel, set a course closer to land, but on the seaward side of 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) in depth. Also, Centaur was sailing completely illuminated, with the exception of the two bow floodlights, which had been switched off as they interfered with visibility from the bridge. There are three main theories as to why Centaur was attacked: ### Legitimate target This theory stems from the rumours spreading after Centaur's sinking. If Centaur had been in breach of the Hague Convention of 1907, and someone had informed the Japanese of this, I-177 may have been under valid orders to attack. When Centaur left Sydney, her decks were packed with green-uniformed men, and as Field Ambulance uniforms were only distinguishable from other Army uniforms by badge insignia and the colouration of the cloth band ringing the hat, a distant observer could have concluded that the hospital ship was transporting soldiers. Those witnessing the loading in Sydney would have seen the ambulance drivers bring their weapons aboard, and could have come to a similar conclusion. If a spy or informant had passed this information to the Japanese, I-177 could have been lying in wait. The main flaw in this theory is the question of how Nakagawa and his crew were able to predict that Centaur was taking an alternative route and how they were able to determine the new route selected. Similar but later rumours included that during her first voyage, Centaur had transported soldiers to New Guinea, or Japanese prisoners of war back to Australia for interrogation, and consequently had been marked as a legitimate target by the Japanese. Centaur had carried 10 prisoners of war on her return voyage from New Guinea, but as they were all wounded personnel, transporting them on a hospital ship was legal. ### Mistaken target This theory states that Nakagawa was unaware that the vessel he was attacking was a hospital ship, and that the sinking was an unfortunate accident. This view was supported by several Japanese officers, both before and after the revelation that Nakagawa was responsible. Amongst them was Lieutenant Commander Zenji Orita, who took command of I-177 after Nakagawa. Orita did not hear anything from the crew about having sunk a hospital ship, not even rumours, and believed that if I-177 had knowingly attacked Centaur, he would have learned this from the crew's gossip. When compared to the other contemporary Australian hospital ships, Centaur was the smallest, approximately a third of the size of Manunda or Wanganella. Centaur was also slightly shorter than I-177. The observation of Centaur was made through a periscope, and submarine officers attest that at 1,500 metres (4,900 ft), the optimum range of attack for World War II–era Japanese submarines, some officers would not be able to clearly identify a target ship's profile or hull markings. With Centaur's bow floodlights out, and with the observation of the target made through the periscope, there is a possibility Nakagawa would not have seen the hospital ship's markings if he had been in the wrong position. Apart from the two bow floodlights, Centaur was lit up brilliantly. To attack, I-177 would have had to approach from abeam of Centaur, which was illuminated by both its own lights and a full moon. ### Intentional target This theory states that Nakagawa was fully aware that his target was a hospital ship and decided to sink her regardless, either on his own initiative or on a poor interpretation of his orders. Researchers speculate that as Nakagawa was approaching the end of his tour in Australian waters, and had only sunk a single enemy vessel, the 8,742 ton freighter Limerick, he did not want to return with the disgrace of a single kill. Other claims include that Nakagawa may have been acting in vengeance for casualties inflicted by the Allies during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, or may have expected praise for the sinking of an enemy naval vessel. In February 1944, while in command of I-37, Nakagawa ordered the machine-gunning of survivors from three British merchant vessels torpedoed by his submarine (British Chivalry, on 22 February; , on 24 February; and , on 29 February). His defence, that he was acting under orders from Vice Admiral Shiro Takasu, was not accepted, and he was sentenced to four years imprisonment at Sugamo Prison as a Class B war criminal. These incidents showed that Nakagawa was willing to ignore the laws of war. ## Shipwreck Following World War II, several searches of the waters around North Stradbroke and Moreton Islands failed to reveal Centaur's location. It was believed that she had sunk off the edge of the continental shelf, to a depth at which the Royal Australian Navy did not have the capability to search for a vessel of Centaur's size. Some parties also believed that Rippon's calculated point of sinking was inaccurate, either intentionally or through error. Several points were incorrectly identified as the location where Centaur sank. The first was in the War Diary Situation Report entry for the hospital ship's sinking, which gives , 7 nautical miles (13 km; 8.1 mi) east of Rippon's position. According to Milligan and Foley, this likely occurred because an estimated 50-nautical-mile (93 km; 58 mi) distance from Brisbane, included as a frame of reference, was interpreted literally. In 1974, two divers claimed to have found the ship approximately 40 nautical miles (74 km; 46 mi) east of Brisbane, in 60 metres (200 ft) of water, but did not disclose its exact location. Attempts to relocate the site between 1974 and 1992 were unsuccessful, an associate of the divers claiming that the Navy destroyed the wreck shortly after its discovery. ### Dennis's claim In 1995, it was announced that the shipwreck of Centaur had been located in waters 9 nautical miles (17 km; 10 mi) from the lighthouse on Moreton Island, a significant distance from her believed last position. The finding was reported on A Current Affair, during which footage of the shipwreck, 170 metres (560 ft) underwater, was shown. Discoverer Donald Dennis claimed the identity of the shipwreck had been confirmed by the Navy, the Queensland Maritime Museum, and the Australian War Memorial. A cursory search by the Navy confirmed the presence of a shipwreck at the given location, which was gazetted as a war grave and added to navigation charts by the Australian Hydrographic Office. Over the next eight years, there was growing doubt about the position of Dennis' wreck, due to the distance from both Second Officer Rippon's calculation of the point of sinking and where USS Mugford found the survivors. During this time, Dennis had been convicted on two counts of deception and one of theft through scams. Two wreck divers, Trevor Jackson and Simon Mitchell, used the location for a four-hour world record dive on 14 May 2002, during which they examined the wreck and took measurements, claiming that the ship was too small to be Centaur. Jackson had been studying Centaur for some time, and believed that the wreck was actually another, much smaller ship, the 55-metre-long (180 ft) MV Kyogle, a lime freighter purchased by the Royal Australian Air Force and sunk during bombing practice on 12 May 1951. The facts gathered on the dive were inconclusive, but the divers remained adamant it was not Centaur, and passed this information onto Nick Greenaway, producer of the newsmagazine show 60 Minutes. On the 60th anniversary of the sinking, 60 Minutes ran a story demonstrating that the wreck was not Centaur. It was revealed that nobody at the Queensland Maritime Museum had yet seen Dennis' footage, and when it was shown to Museum president Rod McLeod and maritime historian John Foley, they stated that the shipwreck could not be Centaur due to physical inconsistencies, such as an incorrect rudder. Following this story, and others published around the same time in newspapers, the Navy sent three ships to inspect the site over a two-month period; HMA Ships , , and , before concluding that the shipwreck was incorrectly identified as Centaur. An amendment was made to the gazettal, and the Hydrographic Office began to remove the mark from charts. ### Discovery In April 2008, following the successful discovery of HMAS Sydney, several parties began calling for a dedicated search for Centaur. By the end of 2008, the Australian Federal and Queensland State governments had formed a joint committee and contributed A\$2 million each towards a search, and tenders to supply equipment (including the search vessel, side-scan sonar systems, and a remotely operated inspection submersible) were opened in February 2009, and awarded during the year. The search, conducted from the Defence Maritime Services vessel Seahorse Spirit and overseen by shipwreck hunter David Mearns, commenced during the weekend of 12–13 December 2009. The initial search area off Cape Moreton covered 1,365 square kilometres (527 sq mi), the search team being given 35 days to locate and film the wreck before funding was exhausted. Six sonar targets with similar dimensions to Centaur were located between 15 and 18 December: as none of the contacts corresponded completely to the hospital ship, the search team opted to take advantage of favourable weather conditions and continue investigating the area before returning to each site and making a detailed inspection with a higher-resolution sonar. On the afternoon of 18 December, the sonar towfish separated from the cable, and was lost in 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) of water, forcing the use of the high-resolution sonar to complete the area search. After inspecting the potential targets, Mearns and the search team announced on 20 December that they had found Centaur that morning. The wreck was found at (30 nautical miles (56 km; 35 mi) east of Moreton Island, and less than 1 nautical mile (1.9 km; 1.2 mi) from Rippon's coordinates), resting 2,059 metres (6,755 ft) below sea level in a steep-walled gully, 150 metres (490 ft) wide and 90 metres (300 ft) deep. After returning to shore for Christmas and to install a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) aboard Seahorse Spirit, the search team commenced efforts to document the wreck, the first photographs being taken by the ROV in the early morning of 10 January 2010 confirming that the wreck is Centaur. Conditions for documenting the hospital ship were not optimal on the first ROV dive, and three more dives were made during 11 and 12 January. During the four dives, over 24 hours of footage were collected, along with several photographs: features identified during the operation include the Red Cross identification number, the hospital ship markings, and the ship's bell. The Centaur wreck site has been marked as a war grave and protected with a navigational exclusion zone under the Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976. ## Memorials In 1948, Queensland nurses established the "Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses" which used the money raised to purchase an establishment and name it "Centaur House"; a facility supporting nurses by holding convivial meetings and providing inexpensive accommodation for out-of-town nurses. The original Centaur House was sold in 1971, a new building being purchased and renamed. The second Centaur House was sold in 1979 and although the fund still exists, it no longer owns a physical facility. On 15 September 1968, a cairn was unveiled at Caloundra, Queensland, erected by the local Rotary International Club. In 1990, a stained glass memorial window depicting Centaur, along with a plaque listing the names of those lost in the attack, was installed at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, at a cost of A\$16,000. A display about Centaur was placed at the Australian War Memorial. The centrepiece of the display was a scale model of Centaur presented to the Memorial by Blue Funnel Line, and the display included items that were donated by the survivors, such as a lifejacket, a signal flare, and a medical kit. It was removed in 1992 to make way for a display related to the Vietnam War. A memorial to Centaur was unveiled at Point Danger, Coolangatta, Queensland on 14 May 1993, the 50th anniversary of the sinking. It consists of a monumental stone topped with a cairn, surrounded by a tiled moat with memorial plaques explaining the commemoration. The memorial is surrounded by a park with a boardwalk, overlooking the sea, with plaques for other Merchant Navy and Royal Australian Navy vessels lost during World War II. The unveiling of the memorial was performed by Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Senator John Faulkner. A memorial plaque was laid on the foredeck of Centaur on 12 January 2010, during the fourth and final ROV dive on the hospital ship. This would normally be a breach of the Historic Shipwrecks Act, but a special dispensation permitted the manoeuvre, as placing the plaque on the seabed next to the ship would have seen it sink into the sediment. Following the ship's discovery, a national memorial service at St John's Cathedral, Brisbane on 2 March 2010 was attended by over 600 people, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. A second ceremony for 300 relatives of the hospital ship's personnel was held aboard on 24 September. During the service, which occurred over the wreck site, wreaths were laid and the ashes of three survivors were scattered. ## See also - USS Hope (AH-7) - USS Relief - USS Comfort (AH-6) - SS Op ten Noort'' - Japanese war crimes

Watching the River Flow

Song by Bob Dylan

"Watching the River Flow" is a blues rock song by American singer Bob Dylan. Produced by Leon Russell, it was written and recorded during a session in March 1971 at the Blue Rock Studio in New York City. The collaboration with Russell formed in part through Dylan's desire for a new sound—after a period of immersion in country rock music—and for a change from his previous producer. The song was praised by critics for its energy and distinctive vocals, guitar, and piano. It has been interpreted as Dylan's account of his writer's block in the early 1970s and of his wish to deliver less politically engaged material and to find a new balance between public and private life. Charting in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, the song was included on the 1971 Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II and other Dylan compilation albums. In 2011, five current and former Rolling Stones appeared on a recording of "Watching the River Flow" as part of a tribute project for pianist Ian Stewart. The song has been covered by the Earl Scruggs Revue, Steve Gibbons, Colin James, Russell, and many others. ## Writing and recording Between 1967 and 1970, Bob Dylan recorded and released a series of albums that incorporated country rock elements. All were produced by Bob Johnston. During the sessions for the last of these, New Morning, Dylan decided that he did not want to continue working with Johnston. Al Kooper did uncredited production work to help Dylan finish the album. For his next recording session, Dylan asked Leon Russell, who made his name with Joe Cocker, to assist in finding a new sound. The recording session took place at Blue Rock Studio in New York City on March 16–19, 1971. Russell assembled a backing group that included Carl Radle on bass, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar, and Jim Keltner on drums. Blue Rock co-owners Eddie Korvin and Joe Schick were the engineers. On the first day in the studio, Dylan, on acoustic guitar and vocals, led the band through a rehearsal jam that included covers of "Spanish Harlem", "That Lucky Old Sun", "I'm A Ladies Man" (Hank Snow), "Blood Red River" (Josh White), and "I'm Alabama Bound" (Lead Belly version). On the second day, after a brief rehearsal, "Watching the River Flow" was recorded with Dylan singing live with the band. "When I Paint My Masterpiece" was recorded in similar fashion on the third day, and a mixing of both songs took place on the last day. "Watching the River Flow" was based on studio jams done at Blue Rock, and uses a chord progression in the key of F major. Russell recalled that, when developing the song, the basic track was formed and that Dylan then wrote the lyrics in several minutes. Jim Keltner has also reported that Dylan wrote the songs at the Blue Rock session quickly: "I remember Bob ... had a pencil and a notepad, and he was writing a lot. He was writing these songs on the spot in the studio, or finishing them up at least." The music of "Watching the River Flow"—whose feel the journalist Bob Spitz has likened to Dylan's "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" (1966)—has been described by different critics as a "[b]lues-powered sound [that cascades] like clumps of flotsam and jetsam", as "featur[ing] some blistering guitar work ... and rollicking piano work from Russell", and as "an energetic, funky-gospel rocker". The recording has been praised for the dynamic way in which Dylan's vocal mannerisms bounce off Russell's characteristic stride piano playing. Biographer Clinton Heylin has pointed out that Dylan borrowed the line "If I had wings and I could fly" from the song "The Water is Wide" and words from "Old Man River" for his composition. Four and a half months after the recording session, on August 1, Russell backed Dylan on bass at the Concert for Bangladesh, organized by George Harrison. In November 1971, Russell accompanied Dylan into a studio again to record Dylan's next single, "George Jackson". At this session, Russell once more played bass. Joe Schick, the manager of Blue Rock in 1971, has commented that although Dylan and Russell had a reasonably friendly relationship, their rapport was not strong enough to record an album together. Indeed, Heylin noted in 2009 that Russell had not recorded with Dylan again; however, they did tour together in 2011. Russell died in 2016. The B-side of "Watching the River Flow" was "Spanish Is the Loving Tongue" (written by Charles Badger Clark–Billy Simon). Dylan used the second of two takes of the song recorded during the New Morning sessions on June 2, 1970, in Columbia Studios in New York City. Musicians at these sessions included Bob Dylan, vocal, guitar, harmonica, and piano; Al Kooper, organ; Charlie Daniels, bass; David Bromberg, guitar, dobro; Russ Kunkel, drums; Ron Cornelius, guitar. ## Release and charts The song was released as a single on June 3, 1971. In the US, Columbia Records' promotion included a full-page Billboard advertisement, declaring the track as "A unique new single by Bob Dylan." The advertisement contained a photograph of Dylan holding a camera to his eye. It reached the top 30 in Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and reached No. 41 on the US Billboard charts. Billboard writer Paul Grein has noted that it was the second consecutive American Dylan single, after 1970's "Wigwam", to miss the top 40 by one spot. On November 17, 1971, "Watching the River Flow" appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. It was later included on the compilations Greatest Hits, Vol. 1–3 (2003), Playlist: The Very Best of Bob Dylan '70s (2009), and Beyond Here Lies Nothin': The Collection (2011). ## Critical comments Biographer Robert Shelton wrote that in the early 1970s, Dylan was frequently criticized for "selling out" and that people were pressuring him to go back to his earlier trend of composing protest songs. For Shelton, who noted the promotional photo for "Watching the River Flow" depicting Dylan looking through a camera, the track expressed Dylan's wish just to be an observer, and not a political activist. Author Seth Rogovoy similarly interpreted the song as Dylan's desire to ignore politics and avoid getting involved in people's disputes. The line "[This ol' river] keeps on rollin', though/No matter ... which way the wind does blow" has been heard by writers Peter Vernezze and Carl J. Porter as evidence of Dylan's conviction that "the river of time, the flow of facts, in reality remains unaffected by winds of beliefs, the flow of changing opinions." Greil Marcus highlighted the importance of disregarding one's initial reading of the song. "The first impression is that Bob Dylan is setting up the usual private scene: 'I'll sit here and watch the river flow.' Well, that's certainly a boring idea." He went on to describe how Dylan explores the difficulty of retaining privacy while making public art; the singer is coming to terms with unwanted attention inherent in stardom, without giving up his connection to his fans. Marcus argued that the reason the single was not a hit in the US was because "the time has passed when people are interested in hearing Bob Dylan say he'll just sit there and watch the river flow ... even though that's not quite what he's saying". For Marcus, "Watching the River Flow" is a compelling work, but the subtlety of the song may have prevented it from reaching a wide audience. Clinton Heylin and writer Christopher Ricks discussed Dylan's restlessness in the song. Heylin said that in "Ballad of Easy Rider", co-written by Dylan and Roger McGuinn two years earlier, Dylan claimed he was content to watch while "The river flows, flows to the sea/Wherever it flows, that's where I want to be"; by contrast, in "Watching the River Flow", Dylan writes that he wants to be moving, wishing he was "back in the city/Instead of this old bank of sand". Ricks found Dylan's unsettledness at odds with the implied bucolic notion of watching the river flow. For Ricks, the vocal phrasing and the musical arrangements clash with the lyrics; the "choppy" rhythms and "stroppy stomping" of the backing track, disrupt the theme of contentedly watching the river. He noted that two of the verses begin with "People disagreeing", introducing conflict into the song, and concluded that "Watching the River Flow" is "tarred with a realism that qualifies and complicates the lure of the lazy". Heylin heard in the composition Dylan's admission that in 1971 he felt uninspired about writing lyrics and had no specific ideas he wanted to voice. The biographer placed this avowal in the context of changing, polarized critical estimates of Dylan's work in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In June 1970, Dylan had released Self Portrait, an album that received very negative reviews; Dylan's next album that year, New Morning, was viewed much more favorably by critics, and Ralph Gleason declared "We've got Dylan back again!" For Heylin, Dylan's assertion in the song that he does not have any particular message to express, is an attempt to subvert critics like Gleason. Heylin wrote that both "Watching the River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" discuss Dylan's professed lack of inspiration at the time in an honest and satisfying way. Pointing to the fact that Dylan made no attempt to record either a single or an album in the following year of 1972, he commented that "Dylan had now concluded that he must simply sit by that bank of sand and await [his muse's] return." Ian Bell, in his critical biography of Dylan, wrote that it was "no accident" that both "Watching The River Flow" and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" made much the same statement. Bell argued that "When I Paint My Masterpiece" is the better song as it is the funnier of the two. Bell heard Dylan mocking both his admirers and his own reputation in this composition, while he detected in "Watching The River Flow" an admission that "If creativity is a habit, Dylan was all but cured." ## Personnel The musicians who recorded "Watching the River Flow" are: - Bob Dylan – vocal - Leon Russell – acoustic piano, production - Jesse Ed Davis – electric guitar - Carl Radle (called Charlie Radle on the session notes) – electric bass - Jim Keltner – drums ## Live performances and covers Dylan first performed the song live on November 21, 1978, in El Paso, Texas, and again, two days later, in Norman, Oklahoma. He did not play it in concert again until July 19, 1987, in Eugene, Oregon; from that point on, he has often included the song in his sets. According to his official website, Dylan has performed the song over 500 times, with the most recent performances occurring on the Fall 2021 leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour. The song was featured in Dylan's 2021 concert film Shadow Kingdom: The Early Songs of Bob Dylan, which was available to stream on the Veeps.com platform for a week beginning on July 18. On April 18, 2011, musician Ben Waters released the album Boogie 4 Stu, a tribute to the late Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart, including a version of "Watching the River Flow" featuring the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood, as well as former member Bill Wyman. The five Rolling Stones recorded their contributions separately, in different studios at different times, but the track constituted the first time since 1992 that Wyman had recorded on the same song as his former bandmates. The choice of the song was based on Ian Stewart's judgment that "Watching the River Flow" was "the only decent thing Bob Dylan ever did". The song has been covered by numerous other artists, including Seatrain (1973), the Earl Scruggs Revue (1976), Steve Gibbons (1977), Joe Cocker (1978), Steve Forbert in the I-10 Chronicles (2001), Ken Saydak (2001), Colin James (2005), Asylum Street Spankers (2006), and Steve Gadd (2010). Leon Russell released his own version in 1999 on the compilation Tangled Up in Blues. Deep Purple covered the song for their cover album Turning to Crime (2021).

Battle of Arras (1917)

British offensive during the First World War

The Battle of Arras (also known as the Second Battle of Arras) was a British offensive on the Western Front during the First World War. From 9 April to 16 May 1917, British troops attacked German defences near the French city of Arras on the Western Front. The British achieved the longest advance since trench warfare had begun, surpassing the record set by the French Sixth Army on 1 July 1916. The British advance slowed in the next few days and the German defence recovered. The battle became a costly stalemate for both sides and by the end of the battle, the British Third Army and the First Army had suffered about 160,000 casualties and the German 6th Army about 125,000. For much of the war, the opposing armies on the Western Front were at stalemate, with a continuous line of trenches from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. The Allied objective from early 1915 was to break through the German defences into the open ground beyond and engage the numerically inferior German Army (Westheer) in a war of movement. The British attack at Arras was part of the Anglo-French Nivelle Offensive, the main part of which was the Second Battle of the Aisne 50 mi (80 km) to the south. The aim of the French offensive was to break through the German defences in forty-eight hours. At Arras the Canadians were to capture Vimy Ridge, dominating the Douai Plain to the east, advance towards Cambrai and divert German reserves from the French front. The British effort was an assault on a relatively broad front between Vimy in the north-west and Bullecourt to the south-east. After a long preparatory bombardment, the Canadian Corps of the First Army in the north fought the Battle of Vimy Ridge, capturing the ridge. The Third Army in the centre advanced astride the Scarpe River and in the south, the Fifth Army attacked the Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung) but made few gains. The British armies then conducted smaller attacks to consolidate the new positions. Although these battles were generally successful in achieving limited aims, they came at considerable cost. When the battle officially ended on 16 May, the British had made significant advances but had been unable to achieve a breakthrough. New tactics and the equipment to exploit them had been used, showing that the British had absorbed the lessons of the Battle of the Somme and could mount set-piece attacks against field fortifications. After the Second Battle of Bullecourt (3–17 May), the Arras sector became a quiet front, typical of most of the war in the west, except for attacks on the Hindenburg Line and around Lens, culminating in the Canadian Battle of Hill 70 (15–25 August). ## Background At the beginning of 1917, the British and French were still searching for a way to achieve a strategic breakthrough on the Western Front. The previous year had been marked by the costly success of the Anglo-French offensive astride the River Somme, while the French had been unable to take the initiative because of intense German pressure at Verdun until after August 1916. The battles consumed enormous quantities of resources while achieving virtually no strategic gains on the battlefield. The cost to Germany of containing the Anglo-French attacks had been enormous and given that the material preponderance of the Entente and its allies could only be expected to increase in 1917, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff decided on a defensive strategy on the Western Front for that year. This impasse reinforced the French and British commanders' belief that to end the stalemate they needed a breakthrough; while this desire may have been the main impetus behind the offensive, the timing and location were influenced by political and tactical considerations. ### Home fronts The mid-war years were momentous times. Governing politicians in Paris and London were under great pressure from the press, the people and their parliaments to win the war. Hundreds of thousands of casualties had been suffered at the battles of Gallipoli, the Somme and Verdun, with little prospect of victory in sight. The British Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, resigned in early December 1916 and was succeeded by David Lloyd George. In France, Prime Minister Aristide Briand, along with Minister of Defence Hubert Lyautey were politically diminished and resigned in March 1917, following disagreements over the prospective Nivelle Offensive. The United States was close to declaring war on Germany; American public opinion was growing increasingly incensed by U-boat attacks upon civilian shipping, which had begun with the sinking of in 1915 and culminated in the torpedoing of seven American merchantmen in early 1917. The United States Congress declared war on Imperial Germany on 6 April 1917 but it would be more than a year before a suitable army could be raised, trained and transported to France. ### Strategy The French, Russians and British had intended to launch a joint spring offensive in 1917 but this strategy foundered in February when the Russians admitted that they could not meet their commitments. The spring offensive was reduced from attacks on the Eastern and Western fronts to a French assault along the Aisne River. In March, the German army in the west (Westheer), withdrew to the Hindenburg line in Operation Alberich, negating the tactical assumptions underlying the plans for the French offensive. Until French troops advanced into the former Noyon Salient during the Battles of Arras, they encountered no German troops in the assault sector and French doubts over the wisdom of the offensive increased. The French government desperately needed a victory to avoid civil unrest but the British were wary of proceeding, given the rapidly changing tactical situation. In a meeting with Lloyd George, French commander-in-chief General Robert Nivelle persuaded the British Prime Minister, that if the British launched a diversionary assault to draw German troops away from the Aisne sector, the French offensive could succeed. It was agreed in the London Convention of 16 January, that the French assault on the Aisne would begin in mid-April and that the British would make a diversionary attack in the Arras sector approximately one week prior. ### Tactics: British Expeditionary Force Three of the armies of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig) were in the Arras sector, the Fifth Army (General Hubert Gough) in the south, the Third Army (General Edmund Allenby) in the centre and the First Army (General Henry Horne) in the north and the plan was devised by Allenby. The British used the lessons of the Somme and Verdun the previous year and planned to attack on an 11 mi (18 km) front, from Vimy Ridge in the north to Neuville-Vitasse, 4 mi (6.4 km) south of the Scarpe river. The preliminary bombardment was planned to last about a week except for a much longer and heavier barrage at Vimy Ridge. #### Division attack training In December 1916, the training manual SS 135 replaced SS 109 of 8 May 1916 and marked a significant step in the evolution of the BEF into a homogeneous force, well adapted to its role on the Western Front. The duties of army, corps and divisions in planning attacks were standardised. Armies were to devise the plan and the principles of the artillery component. Corps were to allot tasks to divisions, which would then select objectives and devise infantry plans subject to corps approval. Artillery planning was controlled by corps with consultation of divisions by the corps General Officer Commanding, Royal Artillery (GOCRA) which became the title of the officer at each level of command who devised the bombardment plan, which was coordinated with neighbouring corps artillery commanders by the army GOCRA. Specific parts of the bombardment were nominated by divisions, using their local knowledge and the results of air reconnaissance. The corps artillery commander was to co-ordinate counter-battery fire and the howitzer bombardment for zero hour. Corps controlled the creeping barrage but divisions were given authority over extra batteries added to the barrage, which could be switched to other targets by the divisional commander and brigade commanders. SS 135 provided the basis for the operational technique of the BEF for the rest of 1917. #### Platoon attack training The training manual SS 143 of February 1917 marked the end of attacks made by lines of infantry with a few detached specialists. The platoon was divided into a small headquarters and four sections, one with two trained grenade-throwers and assistants, the second with a Lewis gunner and nine assistants carrying 30 drums of ammunition, the third section comprised a sniper, scout and nine riflemen and the fourth section had nine men with four rifle-grenade launchers. The rifle and hand-grenade sections were to advance in front of the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, in two waves or in artillery formation, which covered an area 100 yd (91 m) wide and 50 yd (46 m) deep, with the four sections in a diamond pattern, the rifle section ahead, rifle grenade and bombing sections to the sides and the Lewis gun section behind, until resistance was met. German defenders were to be suppressed by fire from the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, while the riflemen and hand-grenade sections moved forward, preferably by infiltrating around the flanks of the resistance, to overwhelm the defenders from the rear. The changes in equipment, organisation and formation were elaborated in SS 144 The Normal Formation For the Attack of February 1917, which recommended that the leading troops should push on to the final objective, when only one or two were involved but that for a greater number of objectives, when artillery covering fire was available for the depth of the intended advance, fresh platoons should "leap-frog" through the leading platoons to the next objective. The new organisations and equipment gave the infantry platoon the capacity for fire and manoeuvre, even in the absence of adequate artillery support. To bring uniformity in adoption of the methods laid down in the revised manuals and others produced over the winter, Haig established a BEF Training Directorate in January 1917, to issue manuals and oversee training. SS 143 and its companion manuals provided British infantry with "off-the-peg" tactics, devised from the experience of the Somme and from French Army operations, to go with new equipment made available by increasing British and Allied war production and better understanding of the organisation necessary to exploit it in battle. ### Tactics: German army In a new manual published on 1 December 1916 by Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, supreme command of the German army), Grundsätze für die Führung in der Abwehrschlacht im Stellungskrieg (Principles of Command for Defensive Battles in Positional Warfare), the policy of unyielding defence of ground, regardless of its tactical value, was replaced by the defence of positions suitable for artillery observation and communication with the rear, where an attacking force would "fight itself to a standstill and use up its resources while the defenders conserve[d] their strength". Defending infantry would fight in areas, with the front divisions in an outpost zone up to 3,000 yd (1.7 mi; 2.7 km) deep behind listening posts, with the main line of resistance placed on a reverse slope, in front of artillery observation posts, which were kept far enough back to retain observation over the outpost zone. Behind the main line of resistance was a Grosskampfzone (battle zone), a second defensive area 1,500–2,500 yd (0.85–1.42 mi; 1.4–2.3 km) deep, on ground hidden from enemy observation, as far as possible while in view of German artillery observers. A rückwärtige Kampfzone (rear battle zone) further back was to be occupied by the reserve battalion of each regiment. Allgemeines über Stellungsbau (Principles of Field Fortification) was published by OHL in January 1917 and by April an outpost zone (Vorpostenfeld) held by sentries, had been built along the Western Front. Sentries could retreat to larger positions (Gruppennester) held by Stosstrupps (five men and an NCO per Trupp), who would join the sentries to recapture sentry-posts by immediate counter-attack. Defensive procedures in the battle zone were similar but with bigger units. The front trench system was the sentry line for the battle zone garrison, which was allowed to move away from concentrations of enemy fire and then counter-attack to recover the battle and outpost zones; such withdrawals were envisaged as occurring on small parts of the battlefield which had been made untenable by Allied artillery fire, as the prelude to Gegenstoß in der Stellung (immediate counter-attack within the position). Such a decentralised battle by large numbers of small infantry detachments would present the attacker with unforeseen obstructions. Resistance from troops equipped with automatic weapons, supported by observed artillery fire, would increase the further the advance progressed. A school was opened in January 1917 to teach infantry commanders the new methods. Given the growing Allied superiority in munitions and manpower, attackers might still penetrate to the second Artillerieschutzstellung (artillery protection line), leaving in their wake German garrisons isolated in resistance nests Widerstandsnester (Widas) still inflicting losses and disorganisation on the attackers. As the attackers tried to capture the Widas and dig in near the German second line, Sturmbattalions and Sturmregimenter of the counter-attack divisions would advance from the rückwärtige Kampfzone into the battle zone, in an immediate counter-attack (Gegenstoß aus der Tiefe). If the immediate counter-attack failed, counter-attack divisions would take their time to prepare a methodical attack if the lost ground was essential to the retention of the main position. Such methods required large numbers of reserve divisions ready to move to the battlefront. The reserve was obtained by creating 22 divisions by internal reorganisation of the army, bringing divisions from the eastern front and by shortening the Western Front, in Operation Alberich. By the spring of 1917, the German army in the west had a strategic reserve of 40 divisions. #### German 6th Army Experience of the German 1st Army in the Somme Battles, (Erfahrungen der I Armee in der Sommeschlacht) was published on 30 January 1917 by Ludendorff but new defensive methods were controversial. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916 Colonel Fritz von Loßberg (Chief of Staff of the 1st Army) had been able to establish a line of relief divisions (Ablösungsdivisionen), with the reinforcements from Verdun, which began to arrive in greater numbers in September. In his analysis of the battle, Loßberg opposed the granting of discretion to front trench garrisons to retire, as he believed that manoeuvre would not evade Allied artillery fire, which could blanket the forward area and invited French or British infantry to occupy vacant areas. Loßberg considered that spontaneous withdrawals would disrupt the counter-attack reserves as they deployed and further deprive battalion and division commanders of the means to conduct an organised defence, which the dispersal of infantry over a wide area had already made difficult. Loßberg and others had severe doubts as to the ability of relief divisions to arrive on the battlefield in time to conduct an immediate counter-attack (Gegenstoss) from behind the battle zone. Sceptics wanted the tactic of fighting in the front line to continue, with authority devolved no further than battalion, to maintain organizational coherence in anticipation of a methodical counter-attack (Gegenangriff) by the relief divisions after 24–48 hours. Ludendorff was sufficiently impressed by Loßberg's memorandum to add it to the new Manual of Infantry Training for War. General Ludwig von Falkenhausen, commander of the 6th Army arranged the infantry at Arras for the rigid defence of the front-line, supported by methodical counter-attacks (Gegenangriffe), by the "relief" divisions (Ablösungsdivisionen) on the second or third day. Five Ablösungsdivisionen were placed behind Douai, 15 mi (24 km) away from the front line. The new Hindenburg line ended at Telegraph Hill between Neuville-Vitasse and Tilloy lez Mofflaines, from whence the original system of four lines 75–150 yd (69–137 m) apart, ran north to the Neuville St Vaast–Bailleul-aux-Cornailles road. About 3 mi (4.8 km) behind were the Wancourt–Feuchy and to the north the Point du Jour lines, running from the Scarpe river north along the east slope of Vimy ridge. The new Wotan line, which extended the Hindenburg position, was built around 4 mi (6.4 km) further back and not entirely mapped by the Allies until the battle had begun. Just before the battle, Falkenhausen had written that parts of the front line might be lost but the five Ablösungsdivisionen could be brought forward to relieve the front divisions on the evening of the second day. On 6 April, General Karl von Nagel, the 6th Army Chief of Staff, accepted that some of the front divisions might need to be relieved on the first evening of battle but that any penetrations would be repulsed with local immediate counter-attacks (Gegenangriffe in der Stellung) by the front divisions. On 7 April, Nagel viewed the imminent British attack as a limited effort against Vimy ridge, preparatory to a bigger attack later, perhaps combined with the French attack expected in mid-April. Construction of positions to fulfil the new policy of area defence had been drastically curtailed by shortages of labour and the long winter, which affected the setting of concrete. The 6th Army commanders had also been reluctant to encourage the British to change their plans if the British detected a thinning of the front line. The Germans were inhibited by the extent of British air reconnaissance, which observed new field works and promptly directed artillery fire on them. The 6th Army failed to redeploy its artillery, which remained in lines easy to see and bombard. Work on defences was also divided between maintaining the front line, strengthening the third line and the new Wotanstellung (Drocourt–Quéant switch line) further back. ## Prelude ### British preparations #### Underground After the Allied conference at Chantilly, Haig issued instructions for army commanders on 17 November 1916, with a general plan for offensive operations in the spring of 1917. The Chief engineer of the Third Army, Major-General E. R. Kenyon, composed a list of requirements by 19 November, for which he had 16 Army Troops companies, five with each corps in the front line and one with XVIII Corps, four tunnelling companies, three entrenching battalions, eight RE labour battalions and 37 labour companies. Inside the old walls of Arras were the Grand Place and Petit Place, under which there were old cellars, which were emptied and refurbished for the accommodation of 13,000 men. Under the suburbs of St Sauveur and Ronville were many caves, some huge, which were rediscovered by accident in October 1916. When cleared out, the caves had room for 11,500 men, one in the Ronville system housing 4,000 men. The 8 ft × 6 ft (2.4 m × 1.8 m) Crinchon sewer followed the ditch of the old fortifications and tunnels were dug from the cellars to the sewer. Two long tunnels were excavated from the Crinchon sewer, one through the St Sauveur and one through the Ronville system, allowing the 24,500 troops safely sheltered from German bombardment to move forward underground, avoiding the railway station, an obvious target for bombardment. The St Sauveur tunnel followed the line of the road to Cambrai and had five shafts in no man's land but the German retirement to the Hindenburg Line forestalled the use of the Ronville tunnels, when the German front line was withdrawn 1,000 yd (910 m) and there was no time to extend the diggings. The subterranean workings were lit by electricity and supplied by piped water, with gas-proof doors at the entrances; telephone cables, exchanges and testing-points used the tunnels, a hospital was installed and a tram ran from the sewer to the St Sauveur caves. The observation post for the VI Corps heavy artillery off the St Sauveur tunnel, had a telephone exchange with 750 circuits; much of the work in this area being done by the New Zealand Tunnelling Company. On the First Army front German sappers also conducted underground operations, seeking out Allied tunnels to assault and counter-mine, in which 41 New Zealand tunnellers were killed and 151 wounded. The British tunnellers had gained an advantage over the German miners by the Autumn of 1916, which virtually ended the German underground threat. The British turned to digging 12 subways about 25 ft (7.6 m) down, to the front line, the longest tunnel being 1,883 yd (1.070 mi; 1.722 km) long of the 10,500 yd (6.0 mi; 9.6 km) dug. In one sector, four Tunnelling companies of 500 men each, worked around-the-clock in 18-hour shifts for two months to dig 12 mi (20 km) of subways for foot traffic, tramways with rails for hand-drawn trolleys and a light railway system. Most tunnels were lit by electricity, accommodated telephone cables and some had trams and water supplies. Caverns were dug into the sides for brigade and battalion HQs, first aid posts and store-rooms. The subways were found to be a most efficient way to relieve troops in the line, form up for the attack and then to evacuate wounded. Some of the tunnels were continued into Russian saps with exits in mine craters in no man's land and new mines were laid. Galleries were dug to be opened after the attack for communication or cable trenches, the work being done by the 172nd, 176th, 182nd and 185th Tunnelling companies (Lieutenant-Colonel G. C. Williams, Controller of Mines First Army). #### War in the air Although the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) entered the battle with inferior aircraft to the Luftstreitkräfte, this did not deter their commander, General Trenchard, from adopting an offensive posture. Dominance of the air over Arras was essential for reconnaissance and the British carried out many aerial patrols. RFC aircraft carried out artillery spotting, photography of trench systems and bombing. Aerial observation was hazardous work as, for best results, the aircraft had to fly at slow speeds and low altitude over the German defences. It became even more dangerous with the arrival of the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen in March 1917. The presence of Jasta 11 led to sharply increased losses of Allied pilots and April 1917, became known as Bloody April. A German infantry officer later wrote, > ...during these days, there was a whole series of dogfights, which almost invariably ended in defeat for the British since it was Richthofen's squadron they were up against. Often five or six planes in succession would be chased away or shot down in flames. The average flying life of a RFC pilot in Arras in April was 18 hours and from 4 to 8 April, the RFC lost 75 aircraft and 105 aircrew. The casualties created a pilot shortage and replacements were sent to the front straight from flying school; during the same period, 56 aircraft were crashed by inexperienced RFC pilots. ### Artillery To keep enemy action to a minimum during the assault, a creeping barrage was planned. This required gunners to create a curtain of high explosive and shrapnel shell explosions that crept across the battlefield in lines, about one hundred metres in advance of the assaulting troops. The Allies had previously used creeping barrages at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and the Battle of the Somme but had encountered two technical problems. The first was accurately synchronising the movement of the troops to the fall of the barrage: for Arras, this was overcome by rehearsal and strict scheduling. The second was the barrage falling erratically as the barrels of heavy guns wore swiftly but at differing rates during fire: for Arras, the rate of wear of each gun barrel was calculated and calibrated accordingly. While there was a risk of friendly fire, the creeping barrage forced the Germans to remain in their shelters, allowing Allied soldiers to advance without fear of machine gun fire. The new instantaneous No. 106 Fuze had been adapted from a French design for high-explosive shells so that they detonated on the slightest impact, vaporising barbed wire. Poison gas shells were used for the final minutes of the barrage. The principal danger to assaulting troops came from enemy artillery fire as they crossed no man's land, accounting for over half the casualties at the first day of the Somme. A further complication was the location of German artillery, hidden as it was behind the ridges. In response, specialist artillery units were created to attack German artillery. Their targets were provided by 1st Field Survey Company, Royal Engineers, who collated data obtained from flash spotting and sound ranging. (Flash spotting required Royal Flying Corps observers to record the location of telltale flashes made by guns whilst firing.) On Zero-Day, 9 April, over 80 per cent of German heavy guns in the sector were neutralised (that is, "unable to bring effective fire to bear, the crews being disabled or driven off") by counter-battery fire. Gas shells were also used against the draught horses of the batteries and to disrupt ammunition supply columns. #### Tanks Forty tanks of the 1st Brigade were to be used in the attack on the Third Army front, eight with XVIII Corps and sixteen each in VII Corps and VI Corps. When the blue line had been reached, four of the VII Corps tanks were to join VI Corps for its attack on the brown line. The black line (first objective) was not to be attacked by tanks, which were to begin the drive to the front line at zero hour and rendezvous with infantry at the black line two hours later. The tanks were reserved for the most difficult objectives beyond the black line in groups of up to ten vehicles. Four tanks were to attack Neuville Vitasse, four against Telegraph Hill, four against The Harp and another four against Tilloy lez Mofflaines and two were to drive down the slope from Roclincourt west of Bois de la Maison Blanche. Once the blue line had fallen, the tanks still running were to drive to rally points. ## Battle ### First phase The preliminary bombardment of Vimy Ridge started on 20 March; and the bombardment of the rest of the sector on 4 April. Limited to a front of only 24 mi (39 km), the bombardment used 2,689,000 shells, over a million more than had been used on the Somme. German casualties were not heavy but the men became exhausted by the endless task of keeping open dug-out entrances and demoralised by the absence of rations caused by the difficulties of preparing and moving hot food under bombardment. Some went without food altogether for two or three consecutive days. By the eve of battle, the front-line trenches had ceased to exist and their barbed wire defences were blown to pieces. The official history of the 2nd Bavarian Reserve Regiment describes the front line as "consisting no longer of trenches but of advanced nests of men scattered about". The 262nd Reserve Regiment history writes that its trench system was "lost in a crater field". To add to the misery, for the last ten hours of bombardment, gas shells were added. Zero-Hour had originally been planned for the morning of 8 April (Easter Sunday) but it was postponed 24 hours at the request of the French, despite reasonably good weather in the assault sector. Zero-Day was rescheduled for 9 April with Zero-Hour at 05:30. The assault was preceded by a hurricane bombardment lasting five minutes, following a relatively quiet night. When the time came, it was snowing heavily; Allied troops advancing across no man's land were hindered by large drifts. It was still dark and visibility on the battlefield was very poor. A westerly wind was at the Allied soldiers' backs blowing "a squall of sleet and snow into the faces of the Germans". The combination of the unusual bombardment and poor visibility meant many German troops were caught unawares and taken prisoner, still half-dressed, clambering out of the deep dugouts of the first two lines of trenches. Others were captured without their boots, trying to escape but stuck in the knee-deep mud of the communication trenches. #### First Battle of the Scarpe (9–14 April 1917) The main British assault of the first day was directly east of Arras, with the 12th (Eastern) Division attacking Observation Ridge, north of the Arras–Cambrai road. After reaching this objective, they were to push on towards Feuchy, as well as the second and third lines of German trenches. At the same time, elements of the 3rd Division began an assault south of the road, with the Devil's Wood, Tilloy-lès-Mofflaines and the Bois des Boeufs as their initial objectives. The ultimate objective of these assaults was the Monchyriegel, a trench running between Wancourt and Feuchy and an important component of the German defences. Most of these objectives, including Feuchy village, had been achieved by the evening of 10 April though the Germans were still in control of large sections of the trenches between Wancourt and Feuchy, particularly in the area of the fortified village of Neuville-Vitasse. The following day, troops from the 56th (1/1st London) Division were able to force the Germans out of the village, although the Monchyriegel was not fully in British hands until a few days later. The British were able to consolidate these gains and push forward towards Monchy-le-Preux, although they suffered many casualties in fighting near the village. One reason for the success of the offensive in this sector was the failure of Falkenhausen to employ a defence in depth. In theory, an attacker would be allowed to make initial gains, thus stretching their lines of communication. Reserves held close to the battlefield would be committed once the initial advance had bogged down, before enemy reinforcements could be brought up. The defenders would thus be able to counter-attack and regain any lost territory. In this sector, Falkenhausen kept his reserve troops too far from the front and they were too late for a useful counter-attack on either 10 or 11 April. #### Battle of Vimy Ridge (9–12 April 1917) At roughly the same time, in perhaps the most carefully crafted portion of the entire offensive, the Canadian Corps launched an assault on Vimy Ridge. Advancing behind a creeping barrage and making heavy use of machine guns – eighty to each brigade, including one Lewis gun in each platoon – the corps was able to advance through about 4,000 yd (3,700 m) of German defences and captured the crest of the ridge at about 13:00 on 10 April. Military historians have attributed the success of this attack to careful planning by Canadian Corps commander Julian Byng and his subordinate General Arthur Currie, constant training and the assignment of specific objectives to each platoon. By giving units specific goals, troops could continue the attack even if their officers were killed or communication broke down, thus bypassing two major problems of combat on the Western Front. The Canadian troops could see the Germans in retreat across the Douai Plain away from the ridge. There was nevertheless an inflexibility to the plan which prevented the leading troops from continuing the advance and on 10 April the Germans began to stop the gaps with reserves. ### Second phase After the territorial gains of the first two days, a lull followed as British guns, ammunition and transport links were moved forward. Battalions of pioneers built temporary roads across the churned up battlefield; heavy artillery (and its ammunition) was manhandled into position in new gun pits; food for the men and feed for the draught horses was brought up and Casualty Clearing Stations were established in readiness for the inevitable counter-attacks. Allied commanders also faced a dilemma: whether to keep their exhausted divisions on the attack and run the risk of having insufficient manpower or replace them with fresh divisions and lose momentum. The news of the battle reached General Ludendorff during his 52nd birthday celebrations at his headquarters in Kreuznach who wrote, "I had looked forward to the expected offensive with confidence and was now deeply depressed". He telephoned each of his commanders and "gained the impression that the principles laid down by OHL were sound but the whole art of leadership lies in applying them correctly". (A later court of inquiry found that Falkenhausen had indeed misunderstood the principles of defence in depth.) Ludendorff immediately ordered reinforcements. On 11 April, he sacked Falkenhausen's chief of staff and replaced him with Loßberg. Loßberg went armed with vollmacht (the right to issue orders in the army commander's name) and within hours, Loßberg began to restructure the German defence. The British aimed to consolidate the gains made in the first days of the offensive, to keep the initiative and to break through in concert with the French at Aisne. From 16 April, it was apparent that the French part of the Nivelle Offensive on the Aisne had not achieved a breakthrough. Haig continued to attack at Arras, to divert troops from the French on the Aisne. #### Second Battle of the Scarpe (23–24 April 1917) At 04:45 on 23 April, following two days of poor visibility and freezing weather, British troops of the Third Army (VI and VII corps), attacked to the east along an approximate 9 mi (14 km) front from Croisilles to Gavrelle, on both sides of the Scarpe. The 51st (Highland) Division attacked on the northern side in determined fighting on the western outskirts of Roeux Wood and the chemical works. On their left, the 37th Division, attacked the buildings west of Roeux Station and gained the line of their objectives on the western slopes of Greenland Hill, north of the railway. On the left of the main British attack, the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division made rapid progress against Gavrelle and secured the village. To the south of the Scarpe and east of Monchy-le-Preux the 29th Division gained the western slopes of the rising ground known as Infantry Hill. The Cojeul river marked a divisional boundary within the VI Corps. Guémappe on the north side of the river was the objective of the 15th (Scottish) Division, attacking east from Wancourt towards Vis-en-Artois. The objective was commanded by the higher ground on the south bank and it was not until the 50th (Northumbrian) Division captured the rise on the south side of the Cojeul that the village was taken. Several determined German counter-attacks were made and by the morning of 24 April, the British held Guémappe, Gavrelle and the high ground overlooking Fontaine-lès-Croisilles and Cherisy; the fighting around Roeux was indecisive. #### Battle of Arleux (28–29 April 1917) The principal objective of the attack was to tie down German reserves to assist the French offensive against the plateau north of the Aisne traversed by the Chemin des Dames. Haig reported, > With a view to economising my troops, my objectives were shallow and for a like reason and also in order to give the appearance of an attack on a more imposing scale, demonstrations were continued southwards to the Arras-Cambrai Road and northwards to the Souchez River. Although the Canadian Corps had taken Vimy Ridge, difficulties in securing the south-eastern flank had left the position vulnerable. To rectify this, British and Canadian troops launched an attack towards Arleux on 28 April. The village was captured by Canadian troops with relative ease but the British troops advancing on Gavrelle met stiffer resistance. The village was secured by early evening but when a German counter-attack forced a brief retreat, elements of the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division were brought up as reinforcements and the village was held. Subsequent attacks on 29 April failed to capture more ground. The attacks achieved the limited objective of securing the Canadian position on Vimy Ridge but casualties were high and the result was disappointing. #### Third Battle of the Scarpe (3–4 May 1917) After securing the area around Arleux at the end of April, the British determined to launch another attack east from Monchy to try to break through the Boiry Riegel and reach the Wotanstellung, another German defensive position in the Douai Plain. This was scheduled to coincide with the Australian attack at Bullecourt to present the Germans with a two–pronged assault. British commanders hoped that success in this venture would force the Germans to retreat further to the east. The British launched another attack using regiments from the 4th Division near the Scarpe on 3 May. Neither effort made a significant advance and the attack was called off the following day after incurring many casualties. The British learned important lessons about the need for close liaison between tanks, infantry and artillery, which they used in the Battle of Cambrai, 1917. ## Flanking operations (Round Bullecourt, 11 April – 16 June) ### First attack on Bullecourt #### 8–10 April The Hindenburg Line defences enclosing the village of Bullecourt formed a re-entrant for about 2,500 yd (2,286 m) to the Balkonstellung (Balcony Trench) around Quéant, defended by the élite German 27th Division. On 8 April it was announced that wire cutting, begun on 5 April, would take another eight days. At dusk on 9 April, patrols went forward and found that the Hindenburg Line was occupied but that the wire cutting bombardment had made several lanes through the wire. Preparations were made in a rush, the 4th Australian Division to attack with two brigades, the 4th on the right and 12th on the left. The attack had to cover 500 yd (457 m) to the wire and another 100 yd (91 m) to the first trench at 4:30 a.m., about an hour and 48 minutes before the sun rose to evade crossfire in the re-entrant between Quéant and Bullecourt. Artillery-fire would continue as normal until zero hour then maintain barrages ion the flanks. At 1:00 a.m. Bullecourt was subjected to a gas bombardment by Livens projectors and Stokes 4-inch mortars as the Australians assembled and waited for the tanks to arrive. Six battalions were out in the snow of no man's land. The left of the 12th Australian Brigade was only 400 yd (366 m) from Bullecourt and dawn was approaching. Zero hour was put back but the tanks had only reached Noreuil and Holmes ordered the infantry back under cover; snow began to fall again and shielded the retirement. Patrols of the 2/7th and 2/8th battalions, West Yorkshire Regiment began to advance from 4:35 p.m. and at 5:10 a.m. the patrols began to retire. The patrols suffered 162 casualties. #### 11 April At a conference at the 4th Australian Division HQ, it was decided that the infantry would advance fifteen minutes after the tanks, rather than wait on a signal from them. Only four tanks reached their start line by 4:30 a.m. but drowning the sound of their engines with machine-gun fire failed and they were heard in the German defences. The tank on the right flank deviated to the right, suffered mechanical difficulties and returned to the railway. Another tank also veered right and crossed the first trench of the Balkonstellung opposite Grenadier Regiment 123 and was knocked out by machine-guns firing armour-piercing (K bullet) ammunition. The next tank to reach the German lines was snagged by wire, then crossed the first trench before being knocked out. The last tank started late and followed a similar path to the first. The four tanks comprising the left-hand section were late and two were knocked out short of the German trenches; the third tank arrived behind the Australian infantry and silenced a machine-gun in Bullecourt. The tank was hit twice, returned to the railway and was hit again. The Australian infantry in the German defences were cut off and the 4th Australian Brigade was forced back; many of its troops were taken prisoner and those who tried to retreat suffered many more casualties. In the 12th Australian Brigade, the 46th Australian Battalion in the first trench was forced out and the 48th Australian Battalion further forward was surrounded. The artillery of the 2nd Guard Division and 220th Division added to the barrage in no man's land and prevented another Australian attack. As the Australians were being forced back, they were unable to salvage ammunition and grenades from the dead and wounded. The British and Australian artillery had eventually begun to fire but this fell on the Australian-occupied trenches, making them untenable. At 12:25 p.m. the 48th Australian Battalion, the last in the German trenches, made an orderly retreated over the bullet-swept ground. By noon the German counter-attack had succeeded; few Australians had managed to re-cross no man's land through artillery and machine-gun fire. ### German attack on Lagnicourt (15 April 1917) Observing that the 1st Australian Division was holding a frontage of 13,000 yd (7.4 mi; 12 km), the local German corps commander General Otto von Moser, commanding Gruppe Quéant (XIV Reserve Corps) planned a spoiling attack to drive back the advanced posts, destroy supplies and guns and then retire to the Hindenburg defences. OHL had added an extra division to his Gruppe and added two more from Gruppe Cambrai to the south, further to strengthen the attack. The four divisions provided 23 battalions for Unternehmen Sturmbock (Operation Battering Ram). The German forces managed to penetrate the Australian front line at the junction on the 1st Australian Division and 2nd Australian Division, occupying the village of Lagnicourt and destroyed six Australian artillery pieces. Counter-attacks from the 9th and 20th Australian battalions restored the front line and the action ended with the Germans having suffered 2,313 casualties and the Australians 1,010. ### Battle of Bullecourt (3–17 May 1917) After the initial assault around Bullecourt failed to penetrate the German lines, British commanders made preparations for a second attempt. British artillery began an intense bombardment of the village, which by 20 April had been virtually destroyed. Although the infantry assault was planned for 20 April, it was pushed back a number of times and finally set for the early morning of 3 May. At 03:45, elements of the 2nd Australian Division attacked east of Bullecourt village, intending to pierce the Hindenburg Line and capture Hendecourt-lès-Cagnicourt, while British troops from the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division attacked Bullecourt, which was finally taken by the British 7th Division and despite determined effort by the Germans was held by the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division. German resistance was fierce and when the offensive was called off on 17 May, few of the initial objectives had been met. The Australians were in possession of much of the German trench system between Bullecourt and Riencourt-lès-Cagnicourt but had been unable to capture Hendecourt. To the west, British troops managed to push the Germans out of Bullecourt but incurred considerable losses, failing also to advance north-east to Hendecourt. ## Aftermath ### Analysis By the standards of the Western Front, the gains of the first two days were nothing short of spectacular. A great deal of ground was gained for relatively few casualties and a number of tactically significant points were captured, notably Vimy Ridge. The offensive drew German troops away from the French offensive in the Aisne sector. In many respects, the battle might be deemed a victory for the British and their allies but these gains were offset by high casualties after the first two days and the failure of the French offensive at the Aisne. By the end of the offensive, the British had suffered more than 150,000 casualties and gained little ground since the first day. Despite significant early gains, they were unable to break through and the situation reverted to stalemate. Although historians generally consider the battle a British victory, in the wider context of the front, it had very little impact on the strategic or tactical situation. Ludendorff later commented "no doubt exceedingly important strategic objects lay behind the British attack but I have never been able to discover what they were". Ludendorff was also "very depressed; had our principles of defensive tactics proved false and if so, what on Earth was to be done?" ### Awards On the Allied side, twenty-five Victoria Crosses were awarded. On the German side, on 24 April 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm awarded Loßberg the Oakleaves (similar to a bar for a repeat award) for the Pour le Mérite he had received at the Battle of the Somme the previous September. ### Casualties The most quoted Allied casualty figures are those in the returns made by Lieutenant-General Sir George Fowke, Haig's adjutant-general. His figures collate the daily casualty tallies kept by each unit under Haig's command. Third Army casualties were 87,226; First Army 46,826 (including 11,004 Canadians at Vimy Ridge) and Fifth Army 24,608, a total of 158,660. German losses are more difficult to determine. Gruppe Vimy and Gruppe Souchez suffered 79,418 casualties but the figures for Gruppe Arras are incomplete. The writers of the German Official History Der Weltkrieg, recorded 85,000 German casualties, 78,000 British losses to the end of April and another 64,000 casualties by the end of May, a total of 142,000 men. German records excluded those "lightly wounded". Captain Cyril Falls, the author of "Military Operations France and Belgium 1917\*" (the History of the Great War volume on the battle) estimated that 30 per cent needed to be added to German returns for comparison with the British. Falls made "a general estimate" that German casualties were "probably fairly equal". Nicholls puts them at 120,000 and Keegan at 130,000. ### Commanders Although Haig paid tribute to Allenby for the "great initial success"; Allenby's subordinates "objected to the way he handled the ... attritional stage" and he was sent to command the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine. He regarded the transfer as a "badge of failure" but "more than redeemed his reputation by defeating" the Ottomans in battles that were fought in the Sinai and Palestine campaign from 1917 to 1918. Haig stayed in his post until the end of the war. When the failures of the 6th Army command became apparent, Ludendorff removed Falkenhausen (who never held a field command again, spending the rest of the war as Governor-General of Belgium) and several staff officers. Ludendorff and Loßberg discovered that although the Allies were capable of breaking through the first position, they could probably not capitalise on their success if they were confronted by a mobile, clever defence. Ludendorff immediately ordered more training in manoeuvre warfare for the Eingreif divisions. Loßberg was soon promoted to general and directed the defensive battle of the 4th Army against the Flanders Offensive of the summer and late autumn; he had become "legendary as the fireman of the Western Front; always sent by OHL to the area of crisis". ### Literature and music Siegfried Sassoon makes reference to the battle in the poem The General. The Anglo-Welsh lyric poet Edward Thomas was killed by a shell on 9 April 1917, during the first day of the Easter Offensive. Thomas's war diary gives a vivid and poignant picture of life on the Western front in the months leading up to the battle. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the translator of Proust, was severely wounded on 23 April 1917 leading an assault on the German trenches outside Monchy-le-Preux (for which he was awarded the MC), while the composer Ernest John Moeran was wounded during the attack on Bullecourt on 3 May 1917.

Letter-winged kite

Raptor native to Australia

The letter-winged kite (Elanus scriptus) is a small, rare and irruptive bird of prey that is found only in Australia. Measuring around 35 cm (14 in) in length with a wingspan of 84–100 cm (33–39 in), the adult letter-winged kite has predominantly pale grey and white plumage and prominent black rings around its red eyes. Its name derives from its highly distinctive black underwing pattern of a shallow 'M' or 'W' shape, visible when in flight. This distinguishes it from the otherwise similar black-shouldered kite. This species is also the only nocturnal species within the order Accipitriformes despite few differences found in its visual anatomy to other closely related kites. The species begins breeding in response to rodent outbreaks, with pairs nesting in loose colonies of up to 50 birds each. Three to four eggs are laid and incubated for around thirty days, though the eggs may be abandoned if the food source disappears. Chicks are fledged within five weeks of hatching. Roosting in well-foliaged trees during the day, the letter-winged kite hunts mostly at night. It is a specialist predator of rodents, which it hunts by hovering above grasslands and fields. It is rated as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s Red List of Threatened Species. ## Taxonomy The letter-winged kite was described by ornithologist John Gould in 1842 under its current binomial name Elanus scriptus. The specific epithet is from the Latin word scriptum, meaning "written" or "marked". British explorer Charles Sturt wrote of seeing them on his travels in his 1849 book Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia. The letter-winged kite is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised, nor is there any recorded geographic variation. Molecular evidence shows that the letter-winged kite and its relatives belong to the subfamily Elaninae, an early offshoot within the raptor family Accipitridae. There is some evidence that they may be more divergent from other raptors and better placed in their own family. "Letter-winged kite" has been designated as the official English-language name by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOU), derived from the letter-like markings under the wings. In Central Australia, southwest of Alice Springs, the Pitjantjatjara name for the letter-winged kite is nyanyitjira. It has been incorrectly called white-breasted sparrowhawk. ## Description The adult letter-winged kite is about 35 cm (14 in) in length, with a wingspan between 84 and 100 cm (33 and 39 in). The female is slightly heavier, averaging 310 g (11 oz) compared to the male's average weight of 260 g (9.2 oz). The sexes have similar plumage. The adult male has pale grey upperparts, wings and nape with a white head and white underparts. It has large deep-red eyes, which are surrounded by a black eye patch. Its bill is black, with a dark grey-brown cere at its base. Its wings are marked with a black shoulder patch above and a striking black line underneath, which runs from the primary coverts to the body, and which resembles a letter 'M' or 'W' when flying. The central rectrices of the tail are pale grey, while the rest of the tail feathers are white. The legs and feet are a fleshy pinkish white or white. The feet have three toes facing forwards and one toe facing backwards. The female is similar but can be distinguished by a greyer crown, and its grey plumage is slightly darker all over. Moulting has been recorded from all months except May and August, and is probably related to breeding. The juvenile has a white lower forehead, face, chin and throat, with a brownish orange band across the forehead, neck and breast. It has a similar dark eye patch to the adult, and the eyes themselves are dark brown. The hindneck is grey-brown, and the upperpart feathers are grey-brown with orange tips. The rump and central tail rectrices are pale grey tipped with orange. The bill is black with a brownish grey cere. The letter-winged kite soars with v-shaped upcurved wings, the primaries slightly spread and the tail fanned, giving it a square appearance. When flying actively, it beats its wings more slowly and deeply than the black-shouldered kite (Elanus axillaris). The wing beats are interspersed with long glides on angled wings. It can also hover motionless facing into the wind and flapping its wings. The 'M' or 'W' on the underside of its wing and lack of black wing tips help distinguish it from the black-shouldered kite. Additionally, the latter species is diurnal, not nocturnal. At night, the letter-winged kite could be mistaken for the eastern barn owl (Tyto javanica) or eastern grass owl (T. longimembris), but these species have large heads; longer and trailing legs; blunted wings; and stockier bodies. The grey falcon (Falco hypoleucos) has somewhat similar colouration to the letter-winged kite but is bulkier and heavier overall, and lacks the black markings. ### Vocalisations The letter-winged kite is generally silent when alone but often noisy when breeding or roosting communally at night, beginning to call at the rising of the moon. Its calls have been described as chicken-like chirping or a repeated loud kacking, and at times resemble those of the barn owl or black-shouldered kite. A rasping call, or scrape, composed of six or seven half-second long notes is the main contact call between a pair. It is often used by the female in answer to a whistle by her mate, when a bird alights at the nest, or—loudly—in response to an intruder. The male can utter a loud whistle in flight, which can serve as an alarm call. Mated pairs chatter to one another at night in the colony. ## Distribution and habitat The usual habitat of the letter-winged kite is arid and semi-arid open, shrubby or grassy country, across the arid interior of the continent, particularly the southern Northern Territory, particularly the Barkly Tableland, and northeastern South Australia, and Queensland, where it is relatively common in western areas south of 20° south, and has been recorded as far afield as Townsville and Stradbroke Island. In South Australia it may reach the Eyre Peninsula and southeastern corner on occasion. The species is generally rare in New South Wales: it has been recorded in the vicinity of Broken Hill in the far west, and twice in Inverell in the north of the state—once found dead in a street in 1965 and once spotted alive a year later. It is rare in Western Australia. Its abundance or even presence in any given area is heavily dependent on availability of food; spells of significant rainfall inland lead to surges in rodent numbers, which in turn lead to irruptions of letter-winged kites. Nesting and raising multiple broods in succession, the kite population may increase ten-fold. Major irruptions have taken place in 1951–53, 1969–70, 1976–77, and 1993–95. Eventually dry conditions lead to a fall in rodent numbers and dispersal of birds, which often starve if they fail to find prey elsewhere. ## Behaviour The letter-winged kite typically hunts at night, with daytime foraging taking place in areas of superabundant or scarce prey. By day, birds roost in leafy trees with plenty of cover, in colonies of up to 400 individuals, becoming active at dusk. Their social behaviour is poorly known on account of their nocturnal habits and shy nature, being difficult to approach when roosting. ### Breeding Within its range, the letter-winged kite generally breeds in an area covering the Diamantina and Lake Eyre drainage basins, Sturt Stony Desert, eastern Simpson Desert and Barkly Tableland, to Richmond, Queensland, and Banka Banka Station in the north and Boolkarie Creek, South Australia, in the south. Nesting has also been recorded in Exmouth Gulf and southwest Western Australia, the southwest of the Northern Territory, and the Clarence River district and northwest of New South Wales. The birds nest in colonies of up to 50 pairs, and have more than one nest and brood at once. At times their nests are close to those of spotted harriers (Circus assimilis), black kites (Milvus migrans), whistling kites (Haliastur sphenurus), brown falcons (Falco berigora) and black falcons (Falco subniger). It is not known if breeding pairs remain bonded after breeding. Aerial courtship displays involve mutual flight high above the nest, with the male flying much higher than the female and holding its wings high with rapidly fluttering wingtips. He drops near its mate, who responds by holding her wings in a similar manner. The two then chatter while circling each other. Copulation often follows. There does not appear to be a set breeding season; instead, the species forms nesting colonies in response to rodent irruptions. Birds produce broods for as long as the rodents are abundant, and stop when their food source declines. Often smaller trees are chosen as nesting sites over larger ones, with some preference given to the beefwood (Grevillea striata). Other species used include waddy (Acacia peuce), coolibah (Eucalyptus microtheca) and sheoaks (Casuarina spp.). Generally there is one nest per tree, though there may be more than one nest in single trees when rodent irruptions provide an abundance of food. The nest is a large, untidy and shallow cup of sticks, usually located in the foliage near the top of trees, some five metres (15 ft) or higher off the ground. On average it is about 50 cm (20 in) wide and 34 cm (13 in) high, with a 20 cm (8 in) diameter cup-shaped depression within. It is lined with green leaves and other material such as regurgitated pellets. The clutch consists of three to four, or rarely five or even six, dull white eggs measuring on average 44 mm × 32 mm (1.7 in × 1.3 in) with red-brown blotches and tapered oval in shape. The markings are often heavier around the larger end of the egg. The female incubates the eggs for 30 days, though this has been difficult to confirm due to unpredictable breeding. The young are born semi-altricial, covered in white down with black beaks and feet and dark brown eyes. By a week old, they have pale tan down on their back and brown eyes. They are fully feathered by 3–4 weeks of age and can fly at 7 weeks. During this time they are brooded by the female, while the male brings food at night. He calls on his approach, at which the female flies out to receive the food and then convey it to the young. Though not known to feed the young himself, the male may at times bring food to the female on the nest. As the brood grows, the female joins the male in catching food; she may eventually begin a second brood and leave the male to feed the older brood. Nestlings fledge at around 32 days, although have been known to be abandoned if the food supply suddenly disappears. Birds in juvenile plumage reach sexual maturity within their first year of age. ### Food and hunting The letter-winged kite hunts mainly in the first two hours after sunset. It flies at a height of 10 to 20 m (35 to 65 ft), moving in wide circles scanning the ground, then hovers at a height of up to 30 m (100 ft). When prey is spotted, the kite drops silently onto it, feet-first with wings raised high. The letter-winged kite's principal prey is the long-haired rat (Rattus villosissimus). When population numbers of this rodent build up, following significant rainfall, the kites are able to breed continuously and colonially so that their numbers increase in parallel. One Central Australian study over two and a half years found that, within six months of an outbreak starting, the birds had relocated to that location. When the rodent populations decline, the now superabundant kites may disperse and appear in coastal areas far from their normal range; though they may occasionally breed in these new locations, they do not persist and eventually disappear. Across Central Australia, the letter-winged kite shares its habitat with other nocturnal rodent hunters, the eastern barn owl and eastern grass owl; the former species prefers larger rodents such as the plains rat (Pseudomys australis), whereas the kite hunts all species, including the sandy inland mouse (Pseudomys hermannsburgensis) and spinifex hopping mouse (Notomys alexis), on availability. Other predators sharing its habitat and prey include the dingo, feral cat and fox. Overall, letter-winged kites average one rodent consumed per day. They have also been recorded hunting the introduced house mouse (Mus musculus) in north-eastern South Australia. Other animals recorded as prey include rabbit, fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata), stripe-faced dunnart (Sminthopsis macroura), Forrest's mouse (Leggadina forresti ), beetles and spur‐throated locust (Nomadacris guttulosa). ### Predation Black falcons have been reported hunting adult letter-winged kites, while black kites have taken nestlings. ## Conservation status The letter-winged kite's fluctuations in abundance make its conservation status difficult to assess, though it is clearly much less common than the black-shouldered kite. It also rarely comes into contact with people across most of its range. It is rated as near threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, as its population may number as low as 1,000 individuals between irruptions. It is unknown to what extent competition for food with the introduced red fox or feral cat, or if habitat degraded by overgrazing, have an impact on the letter-winged kite. It is not known whether the population has increased or decreased overall since European settlement.

Procellariidae

Family of seabirds which includes petrels, shearweters and prions

The family Procellariidae is a group of seabirds that comprises the fulmarine petrels, the gadfly petrels, the diving petrels, the prions, and the shearwaters. This family is part of the bird order Procellariiformes (or tubenoses), which also includes the albatrosses and the storm petrels. The procellariids are the most numerous family of tubenoses, and the most diverse. They range in size from the giant petrels with a wingspan of around 2.0 m (6 ft 7 in), that are almost as large as the albatrosses, to the diving petrels with a wingspan of around 34 cm (13 in) that are similar in size to the little auks or dovekies in the family Alcidae. Male and female birds are identical in appearance. The plumage color is generally dull, with blacks, whites, browns and grays. The birds feed on fish, squid and crustacea, with many also taking fisheries discards and carrion. Whilst agile swimmers and excellent in water, petrels have weak legs and can only shuffle on land, with the giant petrels of the genus Macronectes being the only two species that are capable of proper terrestrial locomotion. All species are accomplished long-distance foragers, and many undertake long trans-equatorial migrations. They are colonial breeders, exhibiting long-term mate fidelity and site philopatry. In all species, a single white egg is laid each breeding season. The parents take it in turns to incubate the egg and to forage for food. The feeding area can be at a great distance from the nest site. The incubation times and chick-rearing periods are exceptionally long compared to other birds. Many procellariids have breeding populations of over several million pairs; others number fewer than 200 birds. Humans have traditionally exploited several species of fulmar and shearwater (known as muttonbirds) for food, fuel, and bait, a practice that continues in a controlled fashion today. Several species are threatened by introduced species attacking adults and chicks in breeding colonies and by long-line fisheries. ## Taxonomy and evolution The family Procellariidae was introduced (as Procellaridæ) by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820. The name is derived from the type genus Procellaria which in turn is derived from the Latin word procella meaning "storm" or "gale". The type genus was named in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae. Procellariidae is one of families that make up the order Procellariiformes. Before the introduction of molecular phylogenetics, the traditional arrangement was to divide the Procellariiformes into a set of four families: Diomedeidae containing the albatrosses, Hydrobatidae containing all the storm petrels, Pelecanoididae containing the diving petrels and Procellariidae containing the petrels, shearwaters and fulmars. The family Hydrobatidae was further divided into two subfamilies, the northern storm petrels in Hydrobatinae and the southern or austral storm petrels in Oceanitinae. A 1998 analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences found there was deep genetic divergence between the two subfamilies. Subsequent large-scale multigene studies found that the two subfamilies were not sister taxa. The storm petrels were therefore split into two families: Hydrobatidae containing the northern storm petrels and Oceanitidae, containing the southern storm petrels. The multigene genetic studies found that the diving petrels in the family Pelecanoididae were nested within the family Procellariidae. As a result, the diving petrels was merged into Procellariidae. The molecular evidence suggests that the albatrosses were the first to diverge from the ancestral stock, and the austral storm petrels next, with the procellariids and northern storm petrels splitting most recently. Within the procellariid family, a genetic analysis based on the cytochrome b gene published in 2004 indicated that the genus Puffinus contained two distinct clades and was polyphyletic. The genus was therefore split and a group of species moved into the resurrected genus Ardenna. The other genera within the family were found to be monotypic but the relationships between the genera remained unclear. This changed when a multigene genetic study published in 2021 provided a genus-level phylogeny of the family. There are 99 species of procellariid in 16 genera. The family has usually been broken up into four fairly distinct groups; the fulmarine petrels, the gadfly petrels, the prions, and the shearwaters. With the inclusion of the diving petrels there are now five main groups. - The fulmarine petrels include the largest procellariids, the giant petrels, as well as the two fulmar species, the snow petrel, the Antarctic petrel, and the Cape petrel. The fulmarine petrels are a diverse group with differing habits and appearances, but are linked morphologically by their skull features, particularly the long prominent nasal tubes. - The four diving petrels are the smallest procellariids with lengths of around 20 cm (7.9 in) and wingspans of 33 cm (13 in). They are compact birds with short wings that are adapted for use under water. They have a characteristic whirring flight and dive into the water without settling. They probably remain all year in the seas near their breeding sites. - The gadfly petrels, so named due to their helter-skelter flight, are the 37 species in the genus Pterodroma. The species vary from small to medium sizes, 26–46 cm (10–18 in) in length, and are long winged with short hooked bills. They are most closely related to Kerguelen petrel which is placed in its own genus Aphrodroma. - The prions comprise six species of true prion in the genus Pachyptila and the closely related blue petrel. Often known in the past as whalebirds, three species have large bills filled with lamellae that they use to filter plankton somewhat as baleen whales do, though the old name derives from their association with whales, not their bills (though "prions" does, deriving from Ancient Greek for "saw"). They are small procellariids, 25–30 cm (9.8–11.8 in) in length, with a prominent dark M-shaped mark across the upperwing of their grey plumage. All are restricted to the southern hemisphere. - The shearwaters are adapted for diving after prey instead of foraging on the ocean's surface; several species have been recorded diving deeper than 30 m (98 ft). They are known for the long trans-equatorial migrations undertaken by many species. The shearwaters include the 20 or so species of the genus Puffinus, seven species in the genus Ardenna, as well as the five large Procellaria species and the four Calonectris species. While all these four genera are often known collectively as shearwaters, the Procellaria are called petrels in their common names. ## Morphology and flight The procellariids are small- to medium-sized seabirds. The largest, the southern giant petrel with a wingspan of 185 to 205 cm (73 to 81 in), is almost as large as albatrosses; the smallest, the diving petrels have a wingspan of 30 to 38 cm (12 to 15 in) and are similar in size to little auks or dovekies in the family Alcidae. There are no obvious differences between the sexes, although females tend to be slighter. Like all Procellariiformes, the procellariids have a characteristic tubular nasal passage used for olfaction. This ability to smell helps to locate patchily distributed prey at sea and may help locate nesting colonies. The plumage of the procellariids is usually dull, with greys, bluish greys, blacks and browns being the usual colours, although some species have striking patterns such as the Cape petrel. The technique of flight among procellariids depends on foraging methods. Compared to an average bird, all procellariids have a high aspect ratio (meaning their wings are long and narrow) and a heavy wing loading. Therefore, they must maintain a high speed in order to remain in the air. Most procellariids use two techniques to do this, namely, dynamic soaring and slope soaring. Dynamic soaring involves gliding across wave fronts, thus taking advantage of the vertical wind gradient and minimising the effort required to stay in the air. Slope soaring is more straightforward: the procellariid turns to the wind, gaining height, from where it can then glide back down to the sea. Most procellariids aid their flight by means of flap-glides, where bursts of flapping are followed by a period of gliding; the amount of flapping dependent on the strength of the wind and the choppiness of the water. Because of the high speeds required for flight, procellariids need to either run or face into a strong wind in order to take off. The giant petrels share with the albatrosses an adaptation known as a shoulder-lock: a sheet of tendon that locks the wing when fully extended, allowing the wing to be kept up and out without any muscle effort. Gadfly petrels often feed on the wing, snapping prey without landing on the water. The flight of the smaller prions is similar to that of the storm petrels, being highly erratic and involving weaving and even looping the loop. The wings of all species are long and stiff. In some species of shearwater the wings are used to power the birds underwater while diving for prey. Their heavier wing loadings, in comparison with surface-feeding procellariids, allow these shearwaters to achieve considerable depths (below 70 m (230 ft) in the case of the short-tailed shearwater). Procellariids generally have weak legs that are set back, and many species move around on land by resting on the breast and pushing themselves forward, often with the help of their wings. The exceptions to this are the two species of giant petrel, which have strong legs used when they feed on land. ## Distribution and migration The procellariids are present in all the world's oceans and most of the seas. They are absent from the Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, but are present year round or seasonally in the rest. The seas north of New Zealand are the centre of procellariid biodiversity, with the most species. Among the groups, the fulmarine petrels have a mostly polar distribution, with most species living around Antarctica and one, the northern fulmar ranging in the Northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Of the four species of diving petrel, two are found along the coasts of South America, while the remaining two have circumpolar distributions in the Southern Ocean. The prions are restricted to the Southern Ocean, and the gadfly petrels are found mostly in the tropics with some temperate species. The shearwaters are the most widespread group and breed in most temperate and tropical seas. Many procellariids undertake long annual migrations in the non-breeding season. Southern species of shearwater such as the sooty shearwater and short-tailed shearwater, breeding on islands off Australia, New Zealand and Chile, undertake transequatorial migrations of millions of birds up to the waters off Alaska and back each year during the austral winter. Manx shearwaters from the North Atlantic also undertake transequatorial migrations from Western Europe and North America to the waters off Brazil in the South Atlantic. The mechanisms of navigation are poorly understood, but displacement experiments where individuals were removed from colonies and flown to far-flung release sites have shown that they are able to home in on their colonies with remarkable precision. A Manx shearwater released in Boston returned to its colony in Skomer, Wales within 13 days, a distance of 5,150 kilometres (3,200 mi). ## Behaviour ### Food and feeding The diet of the procellariids is the most diverse of all the Procellariiformes, as are the methods employed to obtain it. With the exception of the giant petrels, all procellariids are exclusively marine, and the diet of all species is dominated by either fish, squid, crustaceans and carrion, or some combination thereof. The majority of species are surface feeders, obtaining food that has been pushed to the surface by other predators or currents, or have floated in death. Among the surface feeders some, principally the gadfly petrels, can obtain food by dipping from flight, while most of the rest feed while sitting on the water. These surface feeders are dependent on their prey being close to the surface, and for this reason procellariids are often found in association with other predators or oceanic convergences. Studies have shown strong associations between many different kinds of seabirds, including wedge-tailed shearwaters, and dolphins and tuna, which push shoaling fish up towards the surface. The gadfly petrels and the Kerguelen petrel mainly feed at night. In so doing they can take advantage of the nocturnal migration of cephalopods and other food species towards the surface. The fulmarine petrels are generalists, which for the most part take many species of fish and crustacea. The giant petrels, uniquely for Procellariiformes, will feed on land, eating the carrion of other seabirds and seals. They will also attack the chicks of other seabirds. The diet of the giant petrels varies according to sex, with the females taking more krill and the males more carrion. All the fulmarine petrels readily feed on fisheries discards at sea, a habit that has been implicated in (but not proved to have caused) the expansion in range of the northern fulmar in the Atlantic. The three larger prion species have bills filled with lamellae, which act as filters to sift zooplankton from the water. Water is forced through the lamellae and small prey items are collected. This technique is often used in conjunction with a method known as hydroplaning where the bird dips its bill beneath the surface and propels itself forward with wings and feet as if walking on the water. The diving petrels and many of the shearwaters are proficient divers. While it has long been known that they regularly dive from the surface to pursue prey, using their wings for propulsion, the depth that they are able to dive to was not appreciated (or anticipated) until scientists began to deploy maximum-depth recorders on foraging birds. Studies of both long-distance migrants such as the sooty shearwater and more sedentary species such as the black-vented shearwater have shown maximum diving depths of 67 m (220 ft) and 52 m (171 ft). Tropical shearwaters, such as the wedge-tailed shearwater and the Audubon's shearwater, also dive in order to hunt, making the shearwaters the only tropical seabirds capable of exploiting that ecological niche (all other tropical seabirds feed close to the surface). Many other species of procellariid, from white-chinned petrels to slender-billed prions, dive to a couple of metres below the surface, though not as proficiently or as frequently as the shearwaters. ### Breeding #### Colonies The procellariids are colonial, nesting for the most part on islands. These colonies vary in size from over a million birds to just a few pairs, and can be densely concentrated or widely spaced. At one extreme the greater shearwater nests in concentrations of one pair per square metre in three colonies of more than one million pairs, whereas the giant petrels nest in clumped but widely spaced territories that barely qualify as colonial. Colonies are usually located near the coast, but some species nest far inland and even at high altitudes. Hutton's shearwater (Puffinus huttoni) breeds in burrows on the sea-facing mountainside of the Kaikōura Ranges on South Island, New Zealand. The colonies are 1,200–1,800 m (3,900–5,900 ft) above sea level at a distance of 12–18 km (7.5–11.2 mi) from the coast. Other exceptions are Barau's petrel (Pterodroma baraui) that breeds at 2,700 m (8,900 ft) on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and the snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea) that breeds in Antarctica on mountain ledges up to 400 km (250 mi) from the open sea. Most seabirds are colonial, and the reasons for colonial behaviour are assumed to be similar, if incompletely understood by scientists. Procellariids for the most part have weak legs and are unable to easily take off, making them highly vulnerable to mammalian predators. Most procellariid colonies are located on islands that have historically been free of mammals; for this reason some species cannot help but be colonial as they are limited to a few locations to breed. Even species that breed on continental Antarctica, such as the Antarctic petrel, are forced by habitat preference (snow-free north-facing rock) to breed in just a few locations. Most procellariids' nests are in burrows or on the surface on open ground, with a smaller number nesting under the cover of vegetation (such as in a forest). All the fulmarine petrels bar the snow petrel nest in the open, the snow petrel instead nesting inside natural crevices. Of the rest of the procellariids the majority nest in burrows or crevices, with a few tropical species nesting in the open. There are several reasons for these differences. The fulmarine petrels are probably precluded from burrowing by their large size (the crevice-nesting snow petrel is the smallest fulmarine petrel) and the high latitudes they breed in, where frozen ground is difficult to burrow into. The smaller size of the other species, and their lack of agility on land, mean that even on islands free from mammal predators they are still vulnerable to skuas, gulls and other avian predators, something the aggressive oil-spitting fulmars are not. The chicks of all species are vulnerable to predation, but the chicks of fulmarine petrels can defend themselves in a similar fashion to their parents. In the higher latitudes there are thermal advantages to burrow nesting, as the temperature is more stable than on the surface, and there is no wind-chill to contend with. The absence of skuas, gulls and other predatory birds on tropical islands is why some shearwaters and two species of gadfly petrel (Kermadec petrel and the herald petrel) can nest in the open. This has the advantages of reducing competition with burrow nesters from other species and allowing open-ground nesters to nest on coralline islets without soil for burrowing. Procellariids that burrow in order to avoid predation almost always attend their colonies nocturnally in order to reduce predation as well. Procellariids display high levels of philopatry, exhibiting both natal philopatry and site fidelity. Natal philopatry, the tendency of a bird to breed close to where it hatched, is strong among all the Procellariiformes. The evidence for natal philopatry comes from several sources, not the least of which is the existence of several procellariid species that are endemic to a single island. The study of mitochondrial DNA provides evidence of restricted gene flow between different colonies, and has been used to show philopatry in fairy prions. Bird ringing provides compelling evidence of philopatry; a study of Cory's shearwaters nesting near Corsica found that nine out of 61 male chicks that returned to breed at their natal colony actually bred in the burrow they were raised in. This tendency towards philopatry is stronger in some species than others, and several species readily prospect potential new colony sites and colonise them. It is hypothesised that there is a cost to dispersing to a new site, the chance of not finding a mate of the same species, that selects against it for rarer species, whereas there is probably an advantage to dispersal for species that have colony sites that change dramatically during periods of glacial advance or retreat. There are differences in the tendency to disperse based on sex, with females being more likely to breed away from the natal site. #### Mate and site fidelity Procellariids, as well as having strong natal philopatry, exhibit strong site fidelity, returning to the same nesting site, burrow or territory in sequential years. The figure varies for different species but is high for most species, an estimated 91% for Bulwer's petrels. The strength of this fidelity can also vary with sex; almost 85% of male Cory's shearwaters return to the same burrow to breed the year after a successful breeding attempt, while the figure for females is around 76%. This tendency towards using the same site from year to year is matched by strong mate fidelity, with birds breeding with the same partner for many years; it has been suggested that the two are linked, with site fidelity acting as a means in which partnered birds could meet at the beginning of the breeding season. One pair of northern fulmars bred as a pair in the same site for 25 years. Like the albatrosses the procellariids take several years to reach sexual maturity, though due to the greater variety of sizes and lifestyles, the age of first breeding stretches from two or three years in the smaller species to 12 years in the larger ones. The procellariids lack the elaborate breeding dances of the albatrosses, in no small part due to the tendency of most of them to attend colonies at night and breed in burrows, where visual displays are useless. The fulmarine petrels, which nest on the surface and attend their colonies diurnally, do use a repertoire of stereotyped behaviours such as cackling, preening, head waving and nibbling, but for most species courtship interactions are limited to some billing (rubbing the two bills together) in the burrow and the vocalisations made by all species. The calls serve a number of functions: they are used territorially to protect burrows or territories and to call for mates. Each call type is unique to a particular species and indeed it is possible for procellariids to identify the sex of the bird calling. It may also be possible to assess the quality of potential mates; a study of blue petrels found a link between the rhythm and duration of calls and the body mass of the bird. The ability of an individual to recognise its mate has been demonstrated in several species. #### Breeding season Like most seabirds, the majority of procellariids breed once a year. There are exceptions; many individuals of the larger species, such as the white-headed petrel, will skip a breeding season after successfully fledging a chick, and some of the smaller species, such as the Christmas shearwaters, breed on a nine-month schedule. Among those that breed annually, there is considerable variation as to the timing; some species breed in a fixed season while others breed all year round. Climate and the availability of food resources are important influences on the timing of procellariid breeding; species that breed at higher latitudes always breed in the summer as conditions are too harsh in the winter. At lower latitudes many, but not all, species breed continuously. Some species breed seasonally to avoid competition with other species for burrows, to avoid predation or to take advantage of seasonally abundant food. Others, such as the tropical wedge-tailed shearwater, breed seasonally for unknown reasons. Among the species that exhibit seasonal breeding there can be high levels of synchronization, both of time of arrival at the colony and of lay date. Procellariids begin to attend their nesting colony around one month prior to laying. Males will arrive first and attend the colony more frequently than females, partly in order to protect a site or burrow from potential competitors. Prior to laying there is a period known as the pre-laying exodus in which both the male and female are away from the colony, building up reserves in order to lay and undertake the first incubation stint respectively. This pre-laying exodus can vary in length from 9 days (as in the Cape petrel) to around 50 days in Atlantic petrels. All procellariids lay a single white egg per pair per breeding season, in common with the rest of the Procellariiformes. The egg is large compared to that of other birds, weighing 6–24% of the female's weight. Immediately after laying the female goes back to sea to feed while the male takes over incubation. Incubation duties are shared by both sexes in shifts that vary in length between species, individuals and the stage of incubation. The longest recorded shift was 29 days by a Murphy's petrel from Henderson Island; the typical length of a gadfly petrel stint is between 13 and 19 days. Fulmarine petrels, shearwaters and prions tend to have shorter stints, averaging between 3 and 13 days. Incubation takes a long time, from 40 days for the smaller species (such as prions) to around 55 days for the larger species. The incubation period is longer if eggs are abandoned temporarily; procellariid eggs are resistant to chilling and can still hatch after being left unattended for a few days. After hatching the chick is brooded by a parent until it is large enough to thermoregulate efficiently, and in some cases defend itself from predation. This guard stage lasts a short while for burrow-nesting species (2–3 days) but longer for surface nesting fulmars (around 16–20 days) and giant petrels (20–30 days). After the guard stage both parents feed the chick. In many species the parent's foraging strategy alternates between short trips lasting 1–3 days and longer trips of 5 days. The shorter trips, which are taken over the continental shelf, benefit the chick with faster growth, but longer trips to more productive pelagic feeding grounds are needed for the parents to maintain their own body condition. The meals are composed of both prey items and stomach oil, an energy-rich food that is lighter to carry than undigested prey items. This oil is created in a stomach organ known as a proventriculus from digested prey items, and gives procellariids and other Procellariiformes their distinctive musty smell. Chick development is quite slow for birds, with fledging taking place at around two months after hatching for the smaller species and four months for the largest species. The chicks of some species are abandoned by the parents; parents of other species continue to bring food to the nesting site after the chick has left. Chicks put on weight quickly and some can outweigh their parents, although they will slim down before they leave the nest. All procellariid chicks fledge by themselves, and there is no further parental care after fledging. Life expectancy of Procellariidae is between 15 and 20 years; the oldest recorded member was a northern fulmar that was over 50 years. ## Relationship with humans ### Exploitation Procellariids have been a seasonally abundant source of food for people wherever people have been able to reach their colonies. Early records of human exploitation of shearwaters (along with albatrosses and cormorants) come from the remains of hunter-gatherer middens in southern Chile, where sooty shearwaters were taken 5000 years ago. More recently, procellariids have been hunted for food by Europeans, particularly the northern fulmar in Europe, and various species by Inuit, and sailors around the world. The hunting pressure on the Bermuda petrel, or cahow, was so intense that the species nearly became extinct and did go missing for 300 years. The name of one species, the providence petrel, is derived from its (seemingly) miraculous arrival on Norfolk Island, where it provided a windfall for starving European settlers; within ten years the providence petrel was extinct on Norfolk. Several species of procellariid have gone extinct in the Pacific since the arrival of humans, and their remains have been found in middens dated to that time. More sustainable shearwater harvesting industries developed in Tasmania and New Zealand, where the practice of harvesting what are known as muttonbirds continues today. ### Threats and conservation While some species of procellariid have populations that number in the millions, many species are much less common and several are threatened with extinction. Human activities have caused dramatic declines in the numbers of some species, particularly species that were originally restricted to one island. According to the IUCN 43 species are listed as vulnerable or worse, with 12 critically endangered. Procellariids are threatened by many threats, but introduced species on their breeding grounds, light pollution, marine fisheries particularly bycatch, pollution, exploitation and climate change are the main threats measures as the number of species involved. The most pressing threat for many species, particularly the smaller ones, comes from species introduced to their colonies. Procellariids overwhelmingly breed on islands away from land predators such as mammals, and for the most part have lost the defensive adaptations needed to deal with them (with the exception of the oil-spitting fulmarine petrels). The introduction of mammal predators such as feral cats, rats, mongooses and mice can have disastrous results for ecologically naïve seabirds. These predators can either directly attack and kill breeding adults, or, more commonly, attack eggs and chicks. Burrowing species that leave their young unattended at a very early stage are particularly vulnerable to attack. Studies on grey-faced petrels breeding on New Zealand's Whale Island (Moutohora) have shown that a population under heavy pressure from Norway rats will produce virtually no young during a breeding season, whereas if the rats are controlled (through the use of poison), breeding success is much higher. That study highlighted the role that non-predatory introduced species can play in harming seabirds; introduced rabbits on the island caused little damage to the petrels, other than damaging their burrows, but they acted as a food source for the rats during the non-breeding season, which allowed rat numbers to be higher than they otherwise would be, resulting in more predators for the petrels to contend with. Interactions with introduced species can be quite complex. Gould's petrels breed only on two islands, Cabbage Tree Island and Boondelbah Island off Port Stephens (New South Wales). Introduced rabbits destroyed the forest understory on Cabbage Tree Island; this both increased the vulnerability of the petrels to natural predators and left them vulnerable to the sticky fruits of the birdlime tree (Pisonia umbellifera), a native plant. In the natural state these fruits lodge in the understory of the forest, but with the understory removed the fruits fall to the ground where the petrels move about, sticking to their feathers and making flight impossible. Larger species of procellariid face similar problems to the albatrosses with long-line fisheries. These species readily take offal from fishing boats and will steal bait from the long lines as they are being set, risking becoming snared on the hooks and drowning. In the case of the spectacled petrel this has led to the species undergoing a large decline and its listing as vulnerable. Diving species, most especially the shearwaters, are also vulnerable to gillnet fisheries. Studies of gill-net fisheries show that shearwaters (sooty and short-tailed) compose 60% of the seabirds killed by gill-nets in Japanese waters and 40% in Monterey Bay, California in the 1980s, with the total number of shearwaters killed in Japan being between 65,000 and 125,000 per annum over the same study period (1978–1981). Procellariids are vulnerable to other threats as well. Ingestion of plastic flotsam is a problem for the family as it is for many other seabirds. Once swallowed, this plastic can cause a general decline in the fitness of the bird, or in some cases lodge in the gut and cause a blockage, leading to death by starvation. Procellariids are also vulnerable to general marine pollution, as well as oil spills. Some species, such as the Barau's petrel, the Newell's shearwater or the Cory's shearwater, which nest high up on large developed islands are victims of light pollution. Chicks that are fledging are attracted to streetlights and are unable to reach the sea. An estimated 20–40% of fledging Barau's petrels are attracted to the streetlights on Réunion. Conservationists are working with governments and fisheries to prevent further declines and increase populations of endangered procellariids. Progress has been made in protecting many colonies where most species are most vulnerable. On 20 June 2001, the Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels was signed by seven major fishing nations. The agreement lays out a plan to manage fisheries by-catch, protect breeding sites, promote conservation in the industry, and research threatened species. The developing field of island restoration, where introduced species are removed and native species and habitats restored, has been used in several procellariid recovery programmes. Invasive species such as rats, feral cats and pigs have been either removed or controlled in many remote islands in the tropical Pacific (such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands), around New Zealand (where island restoration was developed), and in the south Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The grey-faced petrels of Whale Island (mentioned above) have been achieving much higher fledging successes after the introduced Norway rats were finally completely removed. At sea, procellariids threatened by long-line fisheries can be protected using techniques such as setting long-line bait at night, dying the bait blue, setting the bait underwater, increasing the amount of weight on lines and using bird scarers can all reduce the seabird by-catch. The Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels came into force in 2004 and has been ratified by eight countries, Australia, Ecuador, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, France, Peru and the United Kingdom. The treaty requires these countries to take specific actions to reduce by-catch and pollution and to remove introduced species from nesting islands. ## See also - List of Procellariidae species

Diocletian

Roman emperor from 284 to 305

Diocletian (/ˌdaɪ.əˈkliːʃən/, DYE-ə-KLEE-shən; Latin: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, Ancient Greek: Διοκλητιανός, romanized: Diokletianós; 242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed "Jovius", was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Diocles to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia. Diocles rose through the ranks of the military early in his career, eventually becoming a cavalry commander for the army of Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on a campaign in Persia, Diocles was proclaimed emperor by the troops, taking the name Diocletianus. The title was also claimed by Carus's surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus. Diocletian's reign stabilized the empire and ended the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian as Augustus, co-emperor, in 286. Diocletian reigned in the Eastern Empire, and Maximian reigned in the Western Empire. Diocletian delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as junior colleagues (each with the title Caesar), under himself and Maximian respectively. Under the Tetrarchy, or "rule of four", each tetrarch would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. Diocletian secured the empire's borders and purged it of all threats to his power. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298. Galerius, aided by Diocletian, campaigned successfully against Sassanid Persia, the empire's traditional enemy. In 299, he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon. Diocletian led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favorable peace. Diocletian separated and enlarged the empire's civil and military services and reorganized the empire's provincial divisions, establishing the largest and most bureaucratic government in the history of the empire. He established new administrative centres in Nicomedia, Mediolanum, Sirmium, and Trevorum, closer to the empire's frontiers than the traditional capital at Rome. Building on third-century trends towards absolutism, he styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire's masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies and architecture. Bureaucratic and military growth, constant campaigning, and construction projects increased the state's expenditures and necessitated a comprehensive tax reform. From at least 297 on, imperial taxation was standardized, made more equitable, and levied at generally higher rates. Not all of Diocletian's plans were successful: the Edict on Maximum Prices (301), his attempt to curb inflation via price controls, was counterproductive and quickly ignored. Although effective while he ruled, Diocletian's tetrarchic system collapsed after his abdication under the competing dynastic claims of Maxentius and Constantine, sons of Maximian and Constantius respectively. The Diocletianic Persecution (303–312), the empire's last, largest, and bloodiest official persecution of Christianity, failed to eliminate Christianity in the empire. After 324, Christianity became the empire's preferred religion under Constantine. Despite these failures and challenges, Diocletian's reforms fundamentally changed the structure of the Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the empire economically and militarily, enabling the empire to remain essentially intact for another 150 years despite being near the brink of collapse in Diocletian's youth. Weakened by illness, Diocletian left the imperial office on 1 May 305, becoming the first Roman emperor to abdicate the position voluntarily. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens. His palace eventually became the core of the modern-day city of Split in Croatia. ## Early life Diocletian was born in Dalmatia, probably at or near the town of Salona (modern Solin, Croatia), to which he retired later in life. His original name was Diocles (in full, Gaius Valerius Diocles), possibly derived from Dioclea, the name of both his mother and her supposed place of birth. Diocletian's official birthday was 22 December, and his year of birth has been estimated at between 242 and 245 based on a statement that he was aged 68 at death (alongside other evidence). His parents were of low status; Eutropius records "that he is said by most writers to have been the son of a scribe, but by some to have been a freedman of a senator called Anulinus." The first forty years of his life are mostly obscure. Diocletian was considered an Illyricianus (Illyrian) who had been schooled and promoted by Aurelian. The 12th-century Byzantine chronicler Joannes Zonaras states that he was Dux Moesiae, a commander of forces on the lower Danube. The often-unreliable Historia Augusta states that he served in Gaul, but this is not corroborated by other sources and is ignored by modern historians. The first time Diocletian's whereabouts are accurately established was in 282 when the Emperor Carus made him commander of the Protectores domestici, the elite cavalry force directly attached to the Imperial household. This post earned him the honor of a consulship in 283. ### Death of Numerian Carus's death, amid a successful war with Persia and in mysterious circumstances – he was believed to have been struck by lightning or killed by Persian soldiers – left his sons Numerian and Carinus as the new Augusti. Carinus quickly made his way to Rome from his post in Gaul and arrived there by January 284, becoming the legitimate Emperor in the West. Numerian lingered in the East. The Roman withdrawal from Persia was orderly and unopposed. The Sassanid king Bahram II could not field an army against them as he was still struggling to establish his authority. By March 284, Numerian had only reached Emesa (Homs) in Syria; by November, only Asia Minor. In Emesa he was apparently still alive and in good health: he issued the only extant rescript in his name there, but after he left the city, his staff, including the prefect (Numerian's father-in-law and the dominant influence in his entourage) Aper, reported that he suffered from an inflammation of the eyes. He traveled in a closed coach from then on. When the army reached Bithynia, some of the soldiers smelled an odor emanating from the coach. They opened its curtains and found Numerian dead. Both Eutropius and Aurelius Victor describe Numerian's death as an assassination. Aper officially broke the news in Nicomedia (İzmit) in November. Numerian's generals and tribunes called a council for the succession, and chose Diocles as Emperor, in spite of Aper's attempts to garner support. On 20 November 284, the army of the east gathered on a hill 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) outside Nicomedia. The army unanimously saluted Diocles as their new Augustus, and he accepted the purple imperial vestments. He raised his sword to the light of the sun and swore an oath disclaiming responsibility for Numerian's death. He asserted that Aper had killed Numerian and concealed it. In full view of the army, Diocles drew his sword and killed Aper. Soon after Aper's death, Diocles changed his name to the more Latinate "Diocletianus" – in full, Gaius Valerius Diocletianus. ### Conflict with Carinus After his accession, Diocletian and Lucius Caesonius Bassus were named as consuls and assumed the fasces in place of Carinus and Numerian. Bassus was a member of a senatorial family from Campania, a former consul and proconsul of Africa, chosen by Probus for signal distinction. He was skilled in areas of government where Diocletian presumably had no experience. Diocletian's elevation of Bassus symbolized his rejection of Carinus' government in Rome, his refusal to accept second-tier status to any other emperor, and his willingness to continue the long-standing collaboration between the empire's senatorial and military aristocracies. It also tied his success to that of the Senate, whose support he would need in his advance on Rome. Diocletian was not the only challenger to Carinus' rule; the usurper Julianus, Carinus' corrector Venetiae, took control of northern Italy and Pannonia after Diocletian's accession. Julianus minted coins from Siscia (Sisak, Croatia) declaring himself emperor and promising freedom. This aided Diocletian in his portrayal of Carinus as a cruel and oppressive tyrant. Julianus' forces were weak, and were handily dispersed when Carinus' armies moved from Britain to northern Italy. As the leader of the united East, Diocletian was clearly the greater threat. Over the winter of 284–85, Diocletian advanced west across the Balkans. In the spring, some time before the end of May, his armies met Carinus' across the river Margus (Great Morava) in Moesia. In modern accounts, the site has been located between the Mons Aureus (Seone, west of Smederevo) and Viminacium, near modern Belgrade, Serbia. Despite having a stronger, more powerful army, Carinus held the weaker position. His rule was unpopular, and it was later alleged that he had mistreated the Senate and seduced his officers' wives. It is possible that Flavius Constantius, the governor of Dalmatia and Diocletian's associate in the household guard, had already defected to Diocletian in the early spring. When the Battle of the Margus began, Carinus' prefect Aristobulus also defected. In the course of the battle, Carinus was killed by his own men. Following Diocletian's victory, both the western and the eastern armies acclaimed him as Emperor. Diocletian exacted an oath of allegiance from the defeated army and departed for Italy. ## Early rule Diocletian may have become involved in battles against the Quadi and Marcomanni immediately after the Battle of the Margus. He eventually made his way to northern Italy and made an imperial government, but it is not known whether he visited Rome at this time. There is a contemporary issue of coins suggestive of an imperial adventus (arrival) for the city, but some modern historians state that Diocletian avoided the city, as the city and its Senate were no longer politically relevant to the affairs of the empire and needed to be taught as much. Diocletian dated his reign from his elevation by the army, not his ratification by the Senate, following the practice established by Carus, who had declared the Senate's ratification a useless formality. However, Diocletian offered proof of his deference towards the Senate by retaining Aristobulus as ordinary consul and colleague for 285 (one of the few instances during the Late Empire in which an emperor admitted a privatus as his colleague) and by creating senior senators Vettius Aquilinus and Junius Maximus ordinary consuls for the following year – for Maximus, it was his second consulship. If Diocletian did enter Rome shortly after his accession, he did not stay long; he is attested back in the Balkans by 2 November 285, on campaign against the Sarmatians. Diocletian replaced the prefect of Rome with his consular colleague Bassus. Most officials who had served under Carinus, however, retained their offices under Diocletian. In an act of clementia denoted by the epitomator of Aurelius Victor as unusual, Diocletian did not kill or depose Carinus's traitorous praetorian prefect and consul Aristobulus, but confirmed him in both roles. He later gave him the proconsulate of Africa and the post of urban prefect for 295. The other figures who retained their offices might have also betrayed Carinus. ### Maximian made Caesar The assassinations of Aurelian and Probus demonstrated that sole rulership was dangerous to the stability of the empire. Conflict boiled in every province, from Gaul to Syria, Egypt to the lower Danube. It was too much for one person to control, and Diocletian needed a lieutenant. At some time in 285 at Mediolanum (Milan), Diocletian raised his fellow-officer Maximian to the office of Caesar, making him his effective co-ruler. The concept of dual rulership was not new to the Roman Empire. Augustus, the first emperor, had nominally shared power with his colleagues, and a formal office of co-emperor (co-Augustus) had existed from Marcus Aurelius onward. Most recently, Emperor Carus and his sons had ruled together, albeit unsuccessfully. Diocletian was in a less comfortable position than most of his predecessors, as he had a daughter, Valeria, but no sons. His co-ruler had to be from outside his family, raising the question of trust. Some historians state that Diocletian adopted Maximian as his filius Augusti, his "Augustan son", upon his appointment to the throne, following the precedent of some previous Emperors. This argument has not been universally accepted. Diocletian and Maximian added each other's nomina (their family name, "Valerius" and "Aurelius", respectively) to their own, thus creating an artificial family link and becoming part of the "Aurelius Valerius" family. The relationship between Diocletian and Maximian was quickly couched in religious terms. Around 287 Diocletian assumed the title Iovius (Jovius), and Maximian assumed the title Herculius (Hercules). The titles were probably meant to convey certain characteristics of their associated leaders. Diocletian, in Jovian style, would take on the dominating roles of planning and commanding; Maximian, in Herculian mode, would act as Jupiter's heroic subordinate. For all their religious connotations, the emperors were not "gods" in the tradition of the Imperial cult – although they may have been hailed as such in Imperial panegyrics. Instead, they were seen as the gods' representatives, effecting their will on earth. The shift from military acclamation to divine sanctification took the power to appoint emperors away from the army. Religious legitimization elevated Diocletian and Maximian above potential rivals in a way military power and dynastic claims could not. ### Conflict with Sarmatia and Persia After his acclamation, Maximian was dispatched to fight the rebel Bagaudae, insurgent peasants of Gaul. Diocletian returned to the East, progressing slowly. By 2 November, he had only reached Civitas Iovia (Botivo, near Ptuj, Slovenia). In the Balkans during the autumn of 285, he encountered a tribe of Sarmatians who demanded assistance. The Sarmatians requested that Diocletian either help them recover their lost lands or grant them pasturage rights within the empire. Diocletian refused and fought a battle with them, but was unable to secure a complete victory. The nomadic pressures of the European Plain remained and could not be solved by a single war; soon the Sarmatians would have to be fought again. Diocletian wintered in Nicomedia. There may have been a revolt in the eastern provinces at this time, as he brought settlers from Asia to populate emptied farmlands in Thrace. He visited Syria Palaestina the following spring, His stay in the East saw diplomatic success in the conflict with Persia: in 287, Bahram II granted him precious gifts, declared open friendship with the Empire, and invited Diocletian to visit him. Roman sources insist that the act was entirely voluntary. Around the same time, perhaps in 287, Persia relinquished claims on Armenia and recognized Roman authority over territory to the west and south of the Tigris. The western portion of Armenia was incorporated into the empire and made a province. Tiridates III, the Arsacid claimant to the Armenian throne and a Roman client, had been disinherited and forced to take refuge in the empire after the Persian conquest of 252–53. In 287, he returned to lay claim to the eastern half of his ancestral domain and encountered no opposition. Bahram II's gifts were widely recognized as symbolic of a victory in the ongoing conflict with Persia, and Diocletian was hailed as the "founder of eternal peace". The events might have represented a formal end to Carus's eastern campaign, which probably ended without an acknowledged peace. At the conclusion of discussions with the Persians, Diocletian re-organized the Mesopotamian frontier and fortified the city of Circesium (Buseire, Syria) on the Euphrates. ### Maximian made Augustus Maximian's campaigns were not proceeding as smoothly. The Bagaudae had been easily suppressed, but Carausius, the man he had put in charge of operations against Saxon and Frankish pirates on the Saxon Shore, had, according to literary sources, begun keeping the goods seized from the pirates for himself. Maximian issued a death warrant for his larcenous subordinate. Carausius fled the Continent, proclaimed himself emperor, and agitated Britain and northwestern Gaul into open revolt against Maximian and Diocletian. Far more probable, according to the archaeological evidence, is that Carausius had held some important military post in Britain, already had a firm basis of power in Britain and Northern Gaul, and profited from the lack of legitimacy of the central government. Carausius strove to have his legitimacy as a junior emperor acknowledged by Diocletian: in his coinage, he extolled the "concord" between him and the central power. One bronze piece from 290 read PAX AVGGG, "the Peace of the three Augusti"; on the other side, it showed Carausius together with Diocletian and Maximian, with the caption CARAVSIVS ET FRATRES SVI, "Carausius & his brothers". However, Diocletian could not allow a breakaway regional usurper following in Postumus's footprints to enter, of his own accord, the imperial college. Spurred by the crisis, on 1 April 286, Maximian took up the title of Augustus (emperor). Unusually, Diocletian could not have been present to witness it. It has even been suggested that Maximian usurped the title and was only later recognized by Diocletian in hopes of avoiding civil war. This suggestion is unpopular, as it is clear that Diocletian meant for Maximian to act with a certain amount of independence. It may be posited that Diocletian felt the need to bind Maximian closer to him, by making him his empowered associate, to avoid the possibility of him striking some sort of deal with Carausius. Maximian realized that he could not immediately suppress the rogue commander, so in 287 he campaigned against tribes beyond the Rhine instead. As Carausius was allied to the Franks, Maximian's campaigns could be seen as an effort to deny him a basis of support on the mainland. The following spring, as Maximian prepared a fleet for an expedition against Carausius, Diocletian returned from the East to meet Maximian. The two emperors agreed on a joint campaign against the Alamanni. Diocletian invaded Germania through Raetia while Maximian progressed from Mainz. Each burned crops and food supplies as he went, destroying the Germans' means of sustenance. The two men added territory to the empire and allowed Maximian to continue preparations against Carausius without further disturbance. On his return to the East, Diocletian managed what was probably another rapid campaign against the resurgent Sarmatians. No details survive, but surviving inscriptions indicate that Diocletian took the title Sarmaticus Maximus after 289. In the East, Diocletian engaged in diplomacy with desert tribes in the regions between Rome and Persia. He might have been attempting to persuade them to ally themselves with Rome, thus reviving the old, Rome-friendly, Palmyrene sphere of influence, or to reduce the frequency of their incursions. No details survive for these events. Some of the princes of these states were Persian client kings, a disturbing fact in light of increasing tensions with the Sassanids. In the West, Maximian lost the fleet built in 288 and 289, probably in the early spring of 290. The panegyrist who refers to the loss suggests that its cause was a storm, but this might have been an attempt to conceal an embarrassing military defeat. Diocletian broke off his tour of the Eastern provinces soon thereafter. He returned with haste to the West, reaching Emesa by 10 May 290, and Sirmium on the Danube by 1 July 290. Diocletian met Maximian in Milan either in late December 290 or January 291. The meeting was undertaken with a sense of solemn pageantry. The emperors spent most of their time in public appearances. It has been surmised that the ceremonies were arranged to demonstrate Diocletian's continuing support for his faltering colleague. A deputation from the Roman Senate met with the emperors, renewing its infrequent contact with the Imperial office. The choice of Milan over Rome further snubbed the capital's pride. But then it was already a long-established practice that Rome itself was only a ceremonial capital, as the actual seat of the Imperial administration was determined by the needs of defense. Long before Diocletian, Gallienus (r. 253–68) had chosen Milan for his headquarters. If the panegyric detailing the ceremony implied that the true center of the empire was not Rome, but where the emperor sat ("...the capital of the empire appeared to be there, where the two emperors met"), it simply echoed what had already been stated by the historian Herodian in the early third century: "Rome is where the emperor is". During the meeting, decisions on matters of politics and war were probably made in secret. The Augusti would not meet again until 303. ## Tetrarchy ### Foundation of the Tetrarchy Some time after his return, and before 293, Diocletian transferred command of the war against Carausius from Maximian to Flavius Constantius, which he concluded successfully in 296. Constantius was a former Governor of Dalmatia and a man of military experience stretching back to Aurelian's campaigns against Zenobia (272–73). He was Maximian's praetorian prefect in Gaul, and the husband to Maximian's daughter, Theodora. On 1 March 293 at Milan, Maximian gave Constantius the office of caesar. The same day, in either Philippopolis (Plovdiv, Bulgaria) or Sirmium, Diocletian did the same for Galerius, husband to Diocletian's daughter Valeria, and perhaps Diocletian's praetorian prefect. Constantius was assigned Gaul and Britain. Galerius was initially assigned Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and responsibility for the eastern borderlands. This arrangement is called the Tetrarchy, from a Greek term meaning "rulership by four". The Tetrarchs were more or less sovereign in their own lands, and they travelled with their own imperial courts, administrators, secretaries, and armies. They were joined by blood and marriage; Diocletian and Maximian now styled themselves as brothers, and formally adopted Galerius and Constantius as sons. These relationships implied a line of succession. Galerius and Constantius would become Augusti after the departure of Diocletian and Maximian. Maximian's son Maxentius and Constantius's son Constantine would then become Caesars. In preparation for their future roles, Constantine and Maxentius were taken to Diocletian's court in Nicomedia. ### Conflict in the Balkans and Egypt Diocletian spent the spring of 293 travelling with Galerius from Sirmium (Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) to Byzantium (Istanbul, Turkey). Diocletian then returned to Sirmium, where he remained for the following winter and spring. He campaigned successfully against the Sarmatians in 294, probably in the autumn. The Sarmatians' defeat kept them from the Danube provinces for a long time. Meanwhile, Diocletian built forts north of the Danube, part of a new defensive line called the Ripa Samartica, at Aquincum (Budapest, Hungary), Bononia (Vidin, Bulgaria), Ulcisia Vetera, Castra Florentium, Intercisa (Dunaújváros, Hungary), and Onagrinum (Begeč, Serbia). In 295 and 296 Diocletian campaigned in the region again, and won a victory over the Carpi in the summer of 296. Later during both 299 and 302, as Diocletian was residing in the East, it was Galerius's turn to campaign victoriously on the Danube. By the end of his reign, Diocletian had secured the entire length of the Danube, provided it with forts, bridgeheads, highways, and walled towns, and sent fifteen or more legions to patrol the region; an inscription at Sexaginta Prista on the Lower Danube extolled restored tranquility to the region. The defense came at a heavy cost but was a significant achievement in an area difficult to defend. Galerius, meanwhile, was engaged during 291–293 in disputes in Upper Egypt, where he suppressed a regional uprising. He returned to Syria in 295 to fight the revanchist Persian empire. Diocletian's attempts to bring the Egyptian tax system in line with Imperial standards stirred discontent, and a revolt swept the region after Galerius's departure. The usurper Domitius Domitianus declared himself Augustus in July or August 297. Much of Egypt, including Alexandria, recognized his rule. Diocletian moved into Egypt to suppress him, first putting down rebels in the Thebaid in the autumn of 297, then moving on to besiege Alexandria. Domitianus died in December 297, by which time Diocletian had secured control of the Egyptian countryside. Alexandria, whose defense was organized under Domitianus's former corrector Aurelius Achilleus, held out probably until March 298. Later in 298, a triumphal column was erected in Alexandria to honor Diocletian, known as Pompey's Pillar. Bureaucratic affairs were completed during Diocletian's stay: a census took place, and Alexandria, in punishment for its rebellion, lost the ability to mint independently. Diocletian's reforms in the region, combined with those of Septimius Severus, brought Egyptian administrative practices much closer to Roman standards. Diocletian travelled south along the Nile the following summer, where he visited Oxyrhynchus and Elephantine. In Nubia, he made peace with the Nobatae and Blemmyes tribes. Under the terms of the peace treaty Rome's borders moved north to Philae and the two tribes received an annual gold stipend. Diocletian left Africa quickly after the treaty, moving from Upper Egypt in September 298 to Syria in February 299. He met with Galerius in Mesopotamia. ### War with Persia #### Invasion, counterinvasion In 294, Narseh, a son of Shapur who had been passed over for the Sassanid succession, came to power in Persia. In early 294, Narseh sent Diocletian the customary package of gifts between the empires, and Diocletian responded with an exchange of ambassadors. Within Persia, Narseh was destroying every trace of his immediate predecessors from public monuments. He sought to identify himself with the warlike kings Ardashir I (r. 226–41) and Shapur I (r. 241–72), who had defeated and imprisoned Emperor Valerian (r. 253–260) following his failed invasion of the Sasanian Empire. Narseh declared war on Rome in 295 or 296. He appears to have first invaded western Armenia, where he seized the lands delivered to Tiridates in the peace of 287. He moved south into Roman Mesopotamia in 297, where he inflicted a severe defeat on Galerius in the region between Carrhae (Harran, Turkey) and Callinicum (Raqqa, Syria)., suggested by the historian Fergus Millar to have been somewhere on the Balikh River. Diocletian may or may not have been present at the battle, but he quickly divested himself of all responsibility. In a public ceremony at Antioch, the official version of events was clear: Galerius was responsible for the defeat; Diocletian was not. Diocletian publicly humiliated Galerius, forcing him to walk for a mile at the head of the Imperial caravan, still clad in the purple robes of the Emperor. Galerius was reinforced, probably in the spring of 298, by a new contingent collected from the empire's Danubian holdings. Narseh did not advance from Armenia and Mesopotamia, leaving Galerius to lead the offensive in 298 with an attack on northern Mesopotamia via Armenia. It is unclear if Diocletian was present to assist the campaign; he might have returned to Egypt or Syria. Narseh retreated to Armenia to fight Galerius's force, to Narseh's disadvantage; the rugged Armenian terrain was favorable to Roman infantry, but not to Sassanid cavalry. In two battles, Galerius won major victories over Narseh. During the second encounter, Roman forces seized Narseh's camp, his treasury, his harem, and his wife. Galerius continued down the Tigris, and took the Persian capital Ctesiphon before returning to Roman territory along the Euphrates. #### Peace negotiations Narseh sent an ambassador to Galerius to plead for the return of his wives and children in the course of the war, but Galerius dismissed him. Serious peace negotiations began in the spring of 299. The magister memoriae (secretary) of Diocletian and Galerius, Sicorius Probus, was sent to Narseh to present terms. The conditions of the resulting Peace of Nisibis were heavy: Armenia returned to Roman domination, with the fort of Ziatha as its border; Caucasian Iberia would pay allegiance to Rome under a Roman appointee; Nisibis, now under Roman rule, would become the sole conduit for trade between Persia and Rome; and Rome would exercise control over the five satrapies between the Tigris and Armenia: Ingilene, Sophanene (Sophene), Arzanene (Aghdznik), Corduene (Carduene), and Zabdicene (near modern Hakkâri, Turkey). These regions included the passage of the Tigris through the Anti-Taurus range; the Bitlis pass, the quickest southerly route into Persian Armenia; and access to the Tur Abdin plateau. A stretch of land containing the later strategic strongholds of Amida (Diyarbakır, Turkey) and Bezabde came under firm Roman military occupation. With these territories, Rome would have an advance station north of Ctesiphon, and would be able to slow any future advance of Persian forces through the region. Many cities east of the Tigris came under Roman control, including Tigranokert, Saird, Martyropolis, Balalesa, Moxos, Daudia, and Arzan – though under what status is unclear. At the conclusion of the peace, Tiridates regained both his throne and the entirety of his ancestral claim. Rome secured a wide zone of cultural influence, which led to a wide diffusion of Syriac Christianity from a center at Nisibis in later decades, and the eventual Christianization of Armenia. To strengthen the defence of the east Diocletian had a fortified road constructed at the southern border, where the empire bordered the Arabs, in the year 300. This road would remain in use for centuries but proved ineffective in defending the border as conventional armies could not operate in the region. ## Religious persecutions ### Early persecutions At the conclusion of the Peace of Nisibis, Diocletian and Galerius returned to Syrian Antioch. At some time in 299, the emperors took part in a ceremony of sacrifice and divination in an attempt to predict the future. The haruspices were unable to read the entrails of the sacrificed animals and blamed Christians in the Imperial household. The emperors ordered all members of the court to perform a sacrifice to purify the palace. The emperors sent letters to the military command, demanding the entire army perform the required sacrifices or face discharge. Diocletian was conservative in matters of religion, faithful to the traditional Roman pantheon and understanding of demands for religious purification, but Eusebius, Lactantius and Constantine state that it was Galerius, not Diocletian, who was the prime supporter of the purge. Galerius, even more devoted and passionate than Diocletian, saw political advantage in the persecution. He was willing to break with a government policy of inaction on the issue. Antioch was Diocletian's primary residence from 299 to 302, while Galerius swapped places with his Augustus on the Middle and Lower Danube. Diocletian visited Egypt once, over the winter of 301–2, and issued a grain dole in Alexandria. Following some public disputes with Manicheans, Diocletian ordered that the leading followers of Mani be burnt alive along with their scriptures. In a 31 March 302 rescript from Alexandria, he declared that low-status Manicheans must be executed by the blade, and high-status Manicheans must be sent to work in the quarries of Proconnesus (Marmara Island, Turkey) or the mines of Phaeno in southern Palestine. All Manichean property was to be seized and deposited in the imperial treasury. Diocletian found much to be offended by in Manichean religion: its novelty, its alien origins, its perceived corruption of Roman morals, and its inherent opposition to long-standing religious traditions. His reasons for opposing Manichaeanism were also applied to his next target, Christianity. ### Great Persecution Diocletian returned to Antioch in the autumn of 302. He ordered that the deacon Romanus of Caesarea have his tongue removed for defying the order of the courts and interrupting official sacrifices. Romanus was then sent to prison, where he was executed on 17 November 303. Diocletian left the city for Nicomedia in the winter, accompanied by Galerius. According to Lactantius, Diocletian and Galerius argued over imperial policy towards Christians while wintering at Nicomedia in 302. Diocletian believed that forbidding Christians from the bureaucracy and military would be sufficient to appease the gods, but Galerius pushed for extermination. The two men sought the advice of the oracle of Apollo at Didyma. The oracle responded that the impious on Earth hindered Apollo's ability to provide advice. Rhetorically Eusebius records the Oracle as saying "The just on Earth..." These impious, Diocletian was informed by members of the court, could only refer to the Christians of the empire. At the behest of his court, Diocletian acceded to demands for universal persecution. On 23 February 303, Diocletian ordered that the newly built church at Nicomedia be razed. He demanded that its scriptures be burned, and seized its precious stores for the treasury. The next day, Diocletian's first "Edict against the Christians" was published. The edict ordered the destruction of Christian scriptures and places of worship across the empire, and prohibited Christians from assembling for worship. Before the end of February, a fire destroyed part of the Imperial palace. Galerius convinced Diocletian that the culprits were Christians, conspirators who had plotted with the eunuchs of the palace. An investigation was commissioned, but no responsible party was found. Executions followed anyway, and the palace eunuchs Dorotheus and Gorgonius were executed. One individual, Peter Cubicularius, was stripped, raised high, and scourged. Salt and vinegar were poured in his wounds, and he was slowly boiled over an open flame. The executions continued until at least 24 April 303, when six individuals, including the bishop Anthimus, were decapitated. A second fire occurred sixteen days after the first. Galerius left the city for Rome, declaring Nicomedia unsafe. Diocletian would soon follow. Although further persecutory edicts followed, compelling the arrest of the Christian clergy and universal acts of sacrifice, they were ultimately unsuccessful; most Christians escaped punishment, and pagans too were generally unsympathetic to the persecution. The martyrs' sufferings strengthened the resolve of their fellow Christians. Constantius and Maximian did not apply the later edicts, and left the Christians of the West unharmed. Galerius rescinded the edict in 311, announcing that the persecution had failed to bring Christians back to traditional religion. The temporary apostasy of some Christians, and the surrendering of scriptures, during the persecution played a major role in the subsequent Donatist controversy. Within twenty-five years of the persecution's inauguration, the Christian emperor Constantine would rule the empire alone. He would reverse the consequences of the edicts, and return all confiscated property to Christians. Under Constantine's rule, Christianity would become the empire's preferred religion. Diocletian was demonized by his Christian successors: Lactantius intimated that Diocletian's ascendancy heralded the apocalypse. ## Later life ### Illness and abdication Diocletian entered the city of Rome in the early winter of 303. On 20 November, he celebrated, with Maximian, the twentieth anniversary of his reign (vicennalia), the tenth anniversary of the Tetrarchy (decennalia), and a triumph for the war with Persia. Diocletian soon grew impatient with the city, as the Romans acted towards him with what Edward Gibbon, following Lactantius, calls "licentious familiarity". The Roman people did not give enough deference to his supreme authority; it expected him to act the part of an aristocratic ruler, not a monarchic one. On 20 December 303, Diocletian cut short his stay in Rome and left for the north. He did not even perform the ceremonies investing him with his ninth consulate; he did them in Ravenna on 1 January 304 instead. There are suggestions in the Panegyrici Latini and Lactantius's account that Diocletian arranged plans for his and Maximian's future retirement of power in Rome. Maximian, according to these accounts, swore to uphold Diocletian's plan in a ceremony in the Temple of Jupiter. From Ravenna, Diocletian left for the Danube. There, possibly in Galerius's company, he took part in a campaign against the Carpi. He contracted a minor illness while on campaign, but his condition quickly worsened and he chose to travel in a litter. In the late summer, he left for Nicomedia. On 20 November 304, he appeared in public to dedicate the opening of the circus beside his palace. He collapsed soon after the ceremonies. Over the winter of 304–5 he kept within his palace at all times. Rumours that Diocletian's death was being kept secret until Galerius could assume power spread through the city. On 13 December, it was falsely announced that Diocletian had killed himself. The city was sent into mourning from which it recovered after public declarations that Diocletian was still alive. When Diocletian reappeared in public on 1 March 305, he was emaciated and barely recognizable. Galerius arrived in the city later in March. According to Lactantius, he came armed with plans to reconstitute the Tetrarchy, force Diocletian to step down, and fill the Imperial office with men compliant to his will. Through coercion and threats, he eventually convinced Diocletian to comply with his plan. Lactantius also claims that he had done the same to Maximian at Sirmium. On 1 May 305, Diocletian called an assembly of his generals, traditional companion troops, and representatives from distant legions. They met at the same hill, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) out of Nicomedia, where Diocletian had been proclaimed emperor. In front of a statue of Jupiter, his patron deity, Diocletian addressed the crowd. With tears in his eyes, he told them of his weakness, his need for rest, and his will to resign. He declared that he needed to pass the duty of empire on to someone stronger. He thus became the first Roman emperor to voluntarily abdicate his title. Most in the crowd believed that Constantine and Maxentius, the only adult sons of reigning emperors, who had long been preparing to succeed their fathers, would be granted the title of Caesar. Constantine had travelled through Palestine at the right hand of Diocletian, and was present at the palace in Nicomedia in 303 and 305. It is likely that Maxentius received the same treatment. In Lactantius's account, when Diocletian announced that he was to resign, the entire crowd turned to face Constantine. It was not to be: Severus II and Maximinus II were declared caesars. Maximinus appeared and took Diocletian's robes. On the same day, Severus received his robes from Maximian in Milan. Constantius succeeded Maximian as Augustus of the West, but Constantine and Maxentius were entirely ignored in the transition of power. This did not bode well for the future security of the tetrarchic system. ### Retirement and death Diocletian retired to his homeland, Dalmatia. He moved into the expansive Diocletian's Palace, a heavily fortified compound located by the small town of Spalatum on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, and near the large provincial administrative center of Salona. The palace is preserved in great part to this day and forms the historic core of Split, modern-day Croatia, where it was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. Maximian retired to villas in Campania or Lucania. Their homes were distant from political life, but Diocletian and Maximian were close enough to remain in regular contact with each other. Galerius assumed the consular fasces in 308 with Diocletian as his colleague. In the autumn of 308, Galerius again conferred with Diocletian at Carnuntum (Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria). Diocletian and Maximian were both present on 11 November 308, to see Galerius appoint Licinius to be Augustus in place of Severus, who had died at the hands of Maxentius. He ordered Maximian, who had attempted to return to power after his retirement, to step down permanently. At Carnuntum people begged Diocletian to return to the throne, to resolve the conflicts that had arisen through Constantine's rise to power and Maxentius's usurpation. Diocletian's reply: "If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn't dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed." Diocletian lived for four more years, spending his days in his palace gardens. He saw his tetrarchic system fail, torn apart by the civil wars of his successors. He heard of Maximian's third claim to the throne, his forced suicide, and his damnatio memoriae. In his own palace, statues and portraits of his former companion emperor were torn down and destroyed. After an illness, Diocletian died on 3 December 311, with some proposing that he took his own life in despair. ## Reforms ### Tetrarchic and ideological Diocletian saw his work as that of a restorer, a figure of authority whose duty it was to return the empire to peace, to recreate stability and justice where barbarian hordes had destroyed it. He arrogated, regimented and centralized political authority on a massive scale. In his policies, he enforced an Imperial system of values on diverse and often unreceptive provincial audiences. In the Imperial propaganda from the period, recent history was perverted and minimized in the service of the theme of the tetrarchs as "restorers". Aurelian's achievements were ignored, the revolt of Carausius was backdated to the reign of Gallienus, and it was implied that the tetrarchs engineered Aurelian's defeat of the Palmyrenes; the period between Gallienus and Diocletian was effectively erased. The history of the empire before the tetrarchy was portrayed as a time of civil war, savage despotism, and imperial collapse. In those inscriptions that bear their names, Diocletian, the "founder of eternal peace", and his companions are referred to as "restorers of the whole world", men who succeeded in "defeating the nations of the barbarians, and confirming the tranquility of their world". The theme of restoration was conjoined to an emphasis on the uniqueness and accomplishments of the tetrarchs themselves. The cities where emperors lived frequently in this period – Milan, Trier, Arles, Sirmium, Serdica, Thessaloniki, Nicomedia and Antioch – were treated as alternate imperial seats, to the exclusion of Rome and its senatorial elite. A new style of ceremony was developed, emphasizing the distinction of the emperor from all other persons. The quasi-republican ideals of Augustus's primus inter pares were abandoned for all but the tetrarchs themselves. Diocletian took to wearing a gold crown and jewels, and forbade the use of purple cloth to all but the emperors. His subjects were required to prostrate themselves in his presence (adoratio); the most fortunate were allowed the privilege of kissing the hem of his robe (proskynesis, προσκύνησις). Circuses and basilicas were designed to keep the face of the emperor perpetually in view, and always in a seat of authority. The emperor became a figure of transcendent authority, a man beyond the grip of the masses. His every appearance was stage-managed. This style of presentation was not new – many of its elements were first seen in the reigns of Aurelian and Severus – but it was only under the tetrarchs that it was refined into an explicit system. ### Administrative In keeping with his move from an ideology of republicanism to one of autocracy, Diocletian's council of advisers, his consilium, differed from those of earlier emperors. He destroyed the Augustan illusion of imperial government as a cooperative affair among emperor, army, and senate. In its place he established an effectively autocratic structure, a shift later epitomized in the institution's name: it would be called a consistorium, not a council. Diocletian regulated his court by distinguishing separate departments (scrinia) for different tasks. From this structure came the offices of different magistri, like the magister officiorum ("Master of Offices"), and associated secretariats. These were men suited to dealing with petitions, requests, correspondence, legal affairs, and foreign embassies. Within his court Diocletian maintained a permanent body of legal advisers, men with significant influence on his re-ordering of juridical affairs. There were also two finance ministers, dealing with the separate bodies of the public treasury and the private domains of the emperor, and the praetorian prefect, the most significant person of the whole. Diocletian's reduction of the Praetorian Guards to the level of a simple city garrison for Rome lessened the military powers of the prefect – although a prefect like Asclepiodotus was still a trained general – but the office retained much civil authority. The prefect kept a staff of hundreds and managed affairs in all segments of government: in taxation, administration, jurisprudence, and minor military commands, the praetorian prefect was often second only to the emperor himself. Altogether, Diocletian greatly increased the number of bureaucrats at the government's command; Lactantius claimed that there were now more men using tax money than there were paying it. The historian Warren Treadgold estimates that under Diocletian the number of men in the civil service doubled from 15,000 to 30,000. The classicist Roger S. Bagnall estimates that there was one bureaucrat for every 5–10,000 people in Egypt based on 400 or 800 bureaucrats for 4 million inhabitants. Jones estimated 30,000 bureaucrats, which he remarks is "not an extravagant number" given the size of the empire. He breaks down the bureaucracy as less than 12,000 provincial officials, and roughly 6,000 diocesan officials. For the military, he estimates a modest 300 officials per magister militum, and 40 per dux, for a total of about 5,000 military officials. For the praetorian prefect and urban prefect, he estimates approximately 5,000 clerks. He comments that the expense the empire paid for these was not high, as many lower-level clerks were not paid, and the wage of higher officials was generally modest. To avoid the possibility of local usurpations, to facilitate a more efficient collection of taxes and supplies, and to ease the enforcement of the law, Diocletian doubled the number of provinces from fifty to almost one hundred. The provinces were grouped into twelve dioceses, each governed by an appointed official called a vicarius, or "deputy of the praetorian prefects". Some of the provincial divisions required revision, and were modified either soon after 293 or early in the fourth century. Rome herself (including her environs, as defined by a 100-mile (160 km)-radius perimeter around the city itself) was not under the authority of the praetorian prefect, as she was to be administered by a city prefect of senatorial rank – the sole prestigious post with actual power reserved exclusively for senators, except for some governors in Italy with the titles of corrector and the proconsuls of Asia and Africa. The dissemination of imperial law to the provinces was facilitated by Diocletian's reform of the Empire's provincial structure, which meant that there were now more governors (praesides) ruling over smaller regions and smaller populations. Diocletian's reforms shifted the governors' main function to that of the presiding official in the lower courts: whereas in the early Empire military and judicial functions were the function of the governor, and procurators had supervised taxation, under the new system vicarii and governors were responsible for justice and taxation, and a new class of duces ("dukes"), acting independently of the civil service, had military command. These dukes sometimes administered two or three of the new provinces created by Diocletian, and had forces ranging from two thousand to more than twenty thousand men. In addition to their roles as judges and tax collectors, governors were expected to maintain the postal service (cursus publicus) and ensure that town councils fulfilled their duties. This curtailment of governors' powers as the Emperors' representatives may have lessened the political dangers of an all-too-powerful class of Imperial delegates, but it also severely limited governors' ability to oppose local landed elites, especially those of senatorial status, which, although with reduced opportunities for office holding, retained wealth, social prestige, and personal connections, particularly in relatively peaceful regions without a great military presence. On one occasion, Diocletian had to exhort a proconsul of Africa not to fear the consequences of treading on the toes of the local magnates of senatorial rank. If a governor of senatorial rank himself felt these pressures, the difficulties faced by a mere praeses were likely greater. This led to a strained relationship between the central power and local elites: sometime during 303, attempted military sedition in Seleucia Pieria and Antioch prompted Diocletian to extract bloody retribution on both cities by putting to death a number of their council members for failing in their duties of keeping order in their jurisdiction. ### Legal As with most emperors, much of Diocletian's daily routine rotated around legal affairs – responding to appeals and petitions, and delivering decisions on disputed matters. Rescripts, authoritative interpretations issued by the emperor in response to demands from disputants in both public and private cases, were a common duty of second- and third-century emperors. In the "nomadic" imperial courts of the later Empire, one can track the progress of the imperial retinue through the locations from whence particular rescripts were issued – the presence of the Emperor was what allowed the system to function. Whenever the imperial court would settle in one of the capitals, there was a glut in petitions, as in late 294 in Nicomedia, where Diocletian kept winter quarters. Admittedly, Diocletian's praetorian prefects – Afranius Hannibalianus, Julius Asclepiodotus, and Aurelius Hermogenianus – aided in regulating the flow and presentation of such paperwork, but the deep legalism of Roman culture kept the workload heavy. Emperors in the forty years preceding Diocletian's reign had not managed these duties so effectively, and their output in attested rescripts is low. Diocletian, by contrast, was prodigious in his affairs: there are around 1,200 rescripts in his name still surviving, and these probably represent only a small portion of the total issue. The sharp increase in the number of edicts and rescripts produced under Diocletian's rule has been read as evidence of an ongoing effort to realign the whole Empire on terms dictated by the imperial center. Under the governance of the jurists Gregorius, Aurelius Arcadius Charisius, and Hermogenianus, the imperial government began issuing official books of precedent, collecting and listing all the rescripts that had been issued since the reign of Hadrian (r. 117–38). The Codex Gregorianus includes rescripts up to 292, which the Codex Hermogenianus updated with a comprehensive collection of rescripts issued by Diocletian in 293 and 294. Although the very act of codification was a radical innovation, given the precedent-based design of the Roman legal system, the jurists were generally conservative, and constantly looked to past Roman practice and theory for guidance. They were probably given more free rein over their codes than the later compilers of the Codex Theodosianus (438) and Codex Justinianus (529) would have. Gregorius and Hermogenianus's codices lack the rigid structuring of later codes, and were not published in the name of the emperor, but in the names of their compilers. Their official character was clear in that both collections were acknowledged by courts as authoritative records of imperial legislation up to the date of their publication and regularly updated. After Diocletian's reform of the provinces, governors were called iudex, or judge. The governor became responsible for his decisions first to his immediate superiors, as well as to the more distant office of the emperor. It was most likely at this time that judicial records became verbatim accounts of what was said in trial, making it easier to determine bias or improper conduct on the part of the governor. With these records and the Empire's universal right of appeal, Imperial authorities probably had a great deal of power to enforce behavior standards for their judges. In spite of Diocletian's attempts at reform, the provincial restructuring was far from clear, especially when citizens appealed the decisions of their governors. Proconsuls, for example, were often both judges of first instance and appeal, and the governors of some provinces took appellant cases from their neighbors. It soon became impossible to avoid taking some cases to the emperor for arbitration and judgment. Diocletian's reign marks the end of the classical period of Roman law. Where Diocletian's system of rescripts shows adherence to classical tradition, Constantine's law is full of Greek and eastern influences. Partly in response to economic pressures and in order to protect the vital functions of the state, Diocletian restricted social and professional mobility. Peasants became tied to the land in a way that presaged later systems of land tenure and workers such as bakers, armourers, public entertainers and workers in the mint had their occupations made hereditary. Soldiers' children were also forcibly enrolled, something that followed spontaneous tendencies among the rank-and-file, but also expressed increasing difficulties in recruitment. ### Military It is archaeologically difficult to distinguish Diocletian's fortifications from those of his successors and predecessors. The Devil's Dykes, for example—the Danubian earthworks traditionally attributed to Diocletian—cannot even be securely dated to a particular century. The most that can be said about built structures under Diocletian's reign is that he rebuilt and strengthened forts at the Upper Rhine frontier (where he followed the works built under Probus along the Lake Constance-Basel and the Rhine–Iller–Danube line), on the Danube (where a new line of forts on the far side of the river, the Ripa Sarmatica, was added to older, rehabilitated fortresses), in Egypt and on the frontier with Persia. Beyond that, much discussion is speculative and reliant on the broad generalizations of written sources. Diocletian and the tetrarchs had no consistent plan for frontier advancement, and records of raids and forts built across the frontier are likely to indicate only temporary claims. The Strata Diocletiana, built after the Persian Wars, which ran from the Euphrates North of Palmyra and South towards northeast Arabia in the general vicinity of Bostra, is the classic Diocletianic frontier system, consisting of an outer road followed by tightly spaced forts – defensible hard-points manned by small garrisons – followed by further fortifications in the rear. In an attempt to resolve the difficulty and slowness of transmitting orders to the frontier, the new capitals of the tetrarchic era were all much closer to the empire's frontiers than Rome had been: Trier sat on the Moselle, a tributary of the Rhine, Sirmium and Serdica were close to the Danube, Thessaloniki was on the route leading eastward, and Nicomedia and Antioch were important points in dealings with Persia. Lactantius criticized Diocletian for an excessive increase in troop sizes, declaring that "each of the four princes strove to maintain a much more considerable military force than any sole emperor had done in times past. There began to be fewer men who paid taxes than there were who received wages; so that the means of the husbandmen being exhausted by enormous impositions, the farms were abandoned, cultivated grounds became woodland, and universal dismay prevailed". The fifth-century pagan Zosimus, by contrast, praised Diocletian for keeping troops on the borders, rather than keeping them in the cities, as Constantine was held to have done. Both these views had some truth to them, despite the biases of their authors: Diocletian and the tetrarchs did greatly expand the army, and the growth was mostly in frontier regions, where the increased effectiveness of the new Diocletianic legions seem to have been mostly spread across a network of strongholds. Nevertheless, it is difficult to establish the precise details of these shifts given the weakness of the sources. The army expanded to about 580,000 men from a 285 strength of 390,000, of which 310,000 men were stationed in the East, most of whom manned the Persian frontier. The navy increased from approximately 45,000 to approximately 65,000 men. Diocletian's expansion of the army and civil service meant that the empire's tax burden grew. Since military upkeep took the largest portion of the imperial budget, any reforms here would be especially costly. The proportion of the adult male population, excluding slaves, serving in the army increased from roughly 1 in 25 to 1 in 15, an increase judged excessive by some modern commentators. Official troop allowances were kept to low levels, and the mass of troops often resorted to extortion or the taking of civilian jobs. Arrears became the norm for most troops. Many were even given payment in kind in place of their salaries. Were he unable to pay for his enlarged army, there would likely be civil conflict, potentially open revolt. Diocletian was led to devise a new system of taxation. ### Economic #### Taxation In the early empire (30 BC – AD 235) the Roman government paid for what it needed in gold and silver. The coinage was stable. Requisition, forced purchase, was used to supply armies on the march. During the third-century crisis (235–285), the government resorted to requisition rather than payment in debased coinage, since it could never be sure of the value of money. Requisition was nothing more or less than seizure. Diocletian made requisition into tax. He introduced an extensive new tax system based on heads (capita) and land (iugera) – with one iugerum equal to approximately 0.65 acres – and tied to a new, regular census of the empire's population and wealth. Census officials traveled throughout the empire, assessed the value of labor and land for each landowner, and joined the landowners' totals together to make citywide totals of capita and iuga. The iugum was not a consistent measure of land, but varied according to the type of land and crop, and the amount of labor necessary for sustenance. The caput was not consistent either: women, for instance, were often valued at half a caput, and sometimes at other values. Cities provided animals, money, and manpower in proportion to its capita, and grain in proportion to its iuga. Most taxes were due each year on 1 September, and levied from individual landowners by decuriones (decurions). These decurions, analogous to city councilors, were responsible for paying from their own pocket what they failed to collect. Diocletian's reforms also increased the number of financial officials in the provinces: more rationales and magistri privatae are attested under Diocletian's reign than before. These officials represented the interests of the fisc, which collected taxes in gold, and the Imperial properties. Fluctuations in the value of the currency made collection of taxes in kind the norm, although these could be converted into coin. Rates shifted to take inflation into account. In 296, Diocletian issued an edict reforming census procedures. This edict introduced a general five-year census for the whole empire, replacing prior censuses that had operated at different speeds throughout the empire. The new censuses would keep up with changes in the values of capita and iuga. Italy, which had long been exempt from taxes, was included in the tax system from 290/291 as a diocesis. The city of Rome remained exempt; the "regions" (i.e., provinces) South of Rome (generally called "suburbicarian", as opposed to the Northern, "annonaria" region) seem to have been relatively less taxed, in what probably was a sop offered to the great senatorial families and their landed properties. Diocletian's edicts emphasized the common liability of all taxpayers. Public records of all taxes were made public. The position of decurion, member of the city council, had been an honor sought by wealthy aristocrats and the middle classes who displayed their wealth by paying for city amenities and public works. Decurions were made liable for any shortfall in the amount of tax collected. Many tried to find ways to escape the obligation. By 300, civilians across the empire complained that there were more tax collectors than there were people to pay taxes. #### Currency and inflation Aurelian's attempt to reform the currency had failed; the denarius was dead. Diocletian restored the three-metal coinage and issued better quality pieces. The new system consisted of five coins: the aureus/solidus, a gold coin weighing, like its predecessors, one-sixtieth of a pound; the argenteus, a coin weighing one ninety-sixth of a pound and containing ninety-five percent pure silver; the follis, sometimes referred to as the laureatus A, which is a copper coin with added silver struck at the rate of thirty-two to the pound; the radiatus, a small copper coin struck at the rate of 108 to the pound, with no added silver; and a coin known today as the laureatus B, a smaller copper coin struck at the rate of 192 to the pound. Since the nominal values of these new issues were lower than their intrinsic worth as metals, the state was minting these coins at a loss. This practice could be sustained only by requisitioning precious metals from private citizens in exchange for state-minted coin (of a far lower value than the price of the precious metals requisitioned). By 301, the system was in trouble, strained by a new bout of inflation. Diocletian, therefore, issued his Edict on Coinage, an act re-tariffing all debts so that the nummus, the most common coin in circulation, would be worth half as much. In the edict, preserved in an inscription from the city of Aphrodisias in Caria (near Geyre, Turkey), it was declared that all debts contracted before 1 September 301 must be repaid at the old standards, while all debts contracted after that date would be repaid at the new standards. It appears that the edict was made in an attempt to preserve the current price of gold and to keep the Empire's coinage on silver, Rome's traditional metal currency. This edict risked giving further momentum to inflationary trends, as had happened after Aurelian's currency reforms. The government's response was to issue a price freeze. The Edict on Maximum Prices (Edictum De Pretiis Rerum Venalium) was issued two to three months after the coinage edict, somewhere between 20 November and 10 December 301. The best-preserved Latin inscription surviving from the Greek East, the edict survives in many versions, on materials as varied as wood, papyrus, and stone. In the edict, Diocletian declared that the current pricing crisis resulted from the unchecked greed of merchants, and had resulted in turmoil for the mass of common citizens. The language of the edict calls on the people's memory of their benevolent leaders, and exhorts them to enforce the provisions of the edict, thereby restoring perfection to the world. The edict goes on to list in detail over one thousand goods and accompanying retail prices not to be exceeded. Penalties are laid out for various pricing transgressions. In the most basic terms, the edict was ignorant of the law of supply and demand: it ignored the fact that prices might vary from region to region according to product availability, and it ignored the impact of transportation costs in the retail price of goods. In the judgment of the historian David Potter, the edict was "an act of economic lunacy". The fact that the edict began with a long rhetorical preamble betrays at the same time a moralizing stance as well as a weak grasp of economics – perhaps simply the wishful thinking that criminalizing a practice was enough to stop it. There is no consensus about how effectively the edict was enforced. Supposedly, inflation, speculation, and monetary instability continued, and a black market arose to trade in goods forced out of official markets. The edict's penalties were applied unevenly across the empire (some scholars believe they were applied only in Diocletian's domains), widely resisted, and eventually dropped, perhaps within a year of the edict's issue. Lactantius has written of the perverse accompaniments to the edict; of goods withdrawn from the market, of brawls over minute variations in price, of the deaths that came when its provisions were enforced. His account may be true, but it seems to modern historians exaggerated and hyperbolic, and the impact of the law is recorded in no other ancient source. ## Legacy The historian A.H.M. Jones observed that "It is perhaps Diocletian's greatest achievement that he reigned twenty-one years and then abdicated voluntarily, and spent the remaining years of his life in peaceful retirement." Diocletian was one of the few emperors of the third and fourth centuries to die naturally, and the first in the history of the empire to retire voluntarily. Once he retired, his tetrarchic system collapsed. Without the guiding hand of Diocletian, the empire fell into civil wars. Stability emerged after the defeat of Licinius by Constantine in 324. Under the Christian Constantine, Diocletian was maligned. Constantine's rule, however, demonstrated the benefits of Diocletian's achievements and the autocratic principle he represented: the borders remained secure, in spite of Constantine's large expenditure of forces during his civil wars; the bureaucratic transformation of the Roman government was completed; and Constantine took Diocletian's court ceremonies and made them even more extravagant. Constantine ignored those aspects of Diocletian's reign that did not suit him. Diocletian's policy of preserving a stable silver coinage was abandoned, and the gold solidus became the empire's primary currency instead. Diocletian's persecution of Christians was repudiated and changed to a policy of toleration and then favoritism. Christianity eventually became the official religion in 380. Most importantly, Diocletian's tax system and administrative reforms lasted, with some modifications, until the advent of the Muslims in the 630s. The combination of state autocracy and state religion was instilled in much of Europe, particularly in the lands which adopted Orthodox Christianity. The Era of Martyrs (Latin: anno martyrum or AM), also known as the Diocletian era (Latin: anno Diocletiani), is a method of numbering years used by the Church of Alexandria beginning in the 4th century anno Domini and by the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria from the 5th century to the present. In this system of counting, the beginning of Diocletian's reign in 284 was used as the epoch, making Diocletian's first year in power into the Year 1 of that calendar. Western Christians were aware of this count but did not use it; Dionysius Exiguus replaced the anno Diocletiani era with his anno Domini era because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. Dukljan, a major villain in Serbian mythology who is presented as the adversary of God, is considered to be a mythological reflection of the historical Diocletian. The Talmud includes several semi-legendary accounts of Diocletian. One of them recounts that Diocletian was originally a swineherd, and that in this part of his life, he was teased and abused by young Jews. When he became the Emperor he called up the leaders of the Jews, who were fearful, saying "We have teased Diocletian the Swineherd but we respect Diocletian the Emperor" – to which Diocletian responded, "You must show respect even to the smallest and lowest of the Romans, because you can never know which one of us will rise to greatness."

Charles Eaton (RAAF officer)

RAAF officer

Charles Eaton, OBE, AFC (21 December 1895 – 12 November 1979) was a senior officer and aviator in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and later served as a diplomat. Born in London, he joined the British Army upon the outbreak of World War I and saw action on the Western Front before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. Posted as a bomber pilot to No. 206 Squadron, he was twice captured by German forces, and twice escaped. Eaton left the military in 1920 and worked in India until moving to Australia in 1923. Two years later he joined the RAAF, serving initially as an instructor at No. 1 Flying Training School. Between 1929 and 1931, he was chosen to lead three expeditions to search for lost aircraft in Central Australia, gaining national attention and earning the Air Force Cross for his "zeal and devotion to duty". In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Eaton became the inaugural commanding officer of No. 12 (General Purpose) Squadron at the newly established RAAF Station Darwin in Northern Australia. He was promoted group captain in 1940, and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire the following year. In 1943, he took command of No. 79 Wing at Batchelor, Northern Territory, and was mentioned in despatches during operations in the South West Pacific. Retiring from the RAAF in December 1945, Eaton took up diplomatic posts in the Dutch East Indies, heading a United Nations commission as Consul-General during the Indonesian National Revolution. He returned to Australia in 1950, and served in Canberra for a further two years. Popularly known as "Moth" Eaton, he was a farmer in later life, and died in 1979 aged 83. He is commemorated by several memorials in the Northern Territory. ## Early life and World War I Charles Eaton was born on 21 December 1895 in Lambeth, London, the son of William Walpole Eaton, a butcher, and his wife Grace. Schooled in Wandsworth, Charles worked in Battersea Town Council from the age of fourteen, before joining the London Regiment upon the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Attached to a bicycle company in the 24th Battalion of the 47th Division, he arrived at the Western Front in March 1915. He took part in trench bombing missions and attacks on enemy lines of communication, seeing action in the Battles of Aubers Ridge, Festubert, Loos, and the Somme. On 14 May 1915, Eaton transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), undergoing initial pilot training at Oxford. While he was landing his Maurice Farman Shorthorn at the end of his first solo flight, another student collided with him and was killed, but Eaton was uninjured. He was commissioned in August and was awarded his wings in October. Ranked lieutenant, he served with No. 110 Squadron, which operated Martinsyde G.100 "Elephant" fighters out of Sedgeford, defending London against Zeppelin airships. He was transferred to the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF) in April 1918, and posted the following month to France flying Airco DH.9 single-engined bombers with No. 206 Squadron. On 29 June, he was shot down behind enemy lines and captured in the vicinity of Nieppe. Incarcerated in Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp, Germany, Eaton escaped but was recaptured and court-martialled, after which he was kept in solitary confinement. He later effected another escape and succeeded in rejoining his squadron in the final days of the war. ## Between the wars Eaton remained in the RAF after the war. He married Beatrice Godfrey in St. Thomas's church at Shepherd's Bush, London, on 11 January 1919. Posted to No. 1 Squadron, he was a pilot on the first regular passenger service between London and Paris, ferrying delegates to and from the Peace Conference at Versailles. Eaton was sent to India in December to undertake aerial survey work, including the first such survey of the Himalayas. He resigned from the RAF in July 1920, remaining in India to take up employment with the Imperial Forest Service. After successfully applying for a position with the Queensland Forestry Service, he and his family migrated to Australia in 1923. Moving to South Yarra, Victoria, he enlisted as a flying officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) at Laverton on 14 August 1925. He was posted to No. 1 Flying Training School at RAAF Point Cook, as a flight instructor, where he became known as a strict disciplinarian and a successful trainer. Here Eaton acquired his nickname of "Moth", the Air Force's basic trainer at this time being the De Havilland DH.60 Moth. Promoted flight lieutenant in February 1928, he flew a Moth in the 1929 East-West Air Race from Sydney to Perth, as part of the celebrations for the Western Australia Centenary; he was the sixth competitor across the line, after fellow RFC veteran Jerry Pentland. Regarded as one of the RAAF's most skilful cross-country pilots and navigators, Eaton came to public attention as leader of three military expeditions to find lost aircraft in Central Australia between 1929 and 1931. In April 1929, he coordinated the Air Force's part in the search for aviators Keith Anderson and Bob Hitchcock, missing in their aircraft the Kookaburra while themselves looking for Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, who had force landed the Southern Cross in north Western Australia during a flight from Sydney. Three of the RAAF's five veteran DH.9 biplanes went down in the search—though all crews escaped injury—including Eaton's, which experienced what he labelled "a good crash" on 21 April near Tennant Creek after the engine's pistons melted. The same day, Captain Lester Brain, flying a Qantas aircraft, located the wreck of the Kookaburra in the Tanami Desert, approximately 130 kilometres (81 mi) east-south-east of Wave Hill. Setting out from Wave Hill on 23 April, Eaton led a ground party across rough terrain that reached the crash site four days later and buried the crew, who had perished of thirst and exposure. Not a particularly religious man, he recalled that after the burial he saw a perfect cross formed by cirrus cloud in an otherwise clear blue sky above the Kookaburra. The Air Board described the RAAF's search as taking 240 hours flying time "under the most trying conditions ... where a forced landing meant certain crash". In November 1930, Eaton was selected to lead another expedition for a missing aircraft near Ayers Rock, but it was called off soon afterwards when the pilot showed up in Alice Springs. The next month, he was ordered to search for W.L. Pittendrigh and S.J. Hamre, who had disappeared in the biplane Golden Quest 2 while attempting to discover Lasseter's Reef. Employing four DH.60 Moths, the RAAF team located the missing men near Dashwood Creek on 7 January 1931, and they were rescued four days later by a ground party accompanied by Eaton. Staying in nearby Alice Springs, he recommended a site for the town's new airfield, which was approved and has remained in use since its construction. Eaton was awarded the Air Force Cross on 10 March 1931 "in recognition of his zeal and devotion to duty in conducting flights to Central Australia in search of missing aviators". The media called him the "'Knight Errant' of the desert skies". Aside from his crash landing in the desert while searching for the Kookaburra, Eaton had another narrow escape in 1929 when he was test flying the Wackett Warrigal I with Sergeant Eric Douglas. Having purposely put the biplane trainer into a spin and finding no response in the controls when he tried to recover, Eaton called on Douglas to bail out. When Douglas stood up to do so, the spin stopped, apparently due to his torso changing the airflow over the tail plane. Eaton then managed to land the aeroplane, he and his passenger both badly shaken by the experience. In December 1931, he was posted to No. 1 Aircraft Depot at Laverton, where he continued to fly as well as performing administrative work. Promoted squadron leader in 1936, he undertook a clandestine mission around the new year to scout for suitable landing grounds in the Dutch East Indies, primarily Timor and Ambon. Wearing civilian clothes, he and his companion were arrested and held for three days by local authorities in Koepang, Dutch Timor. Eaton was appointed commanding officer (CO) of No. 21 Squadron in May 1937, one of his first tasks being to undertake another aerial search in Central Australia, this time for prospector Sir Herbert Gepp, who was subsequently discovered alive and well. Later that year, Eaton presided over the court of inquiry into the crash of a Hawker Demon biplane in Victoria, recommending a gallantry award for Aircraftman William McAloney, who had leapt into the Demon's burning wreckage in an effort to rescue its pilot; McAloney subsequently received the Albert Medal for his heroism. Following a 1937 decision to establish the first north Australian RAAF base, in April 1938 Eaton, now on the headquarters staff of RAAF Station Laverton, and Wing Commander George Jones, Director of Personnel Services at RAAF Headquarters, began developing plans for the new station, to be commanded by Jones, and a new squadron that would be based there, led by Eaton. The next month they flew an Avro Anson on an inspection tour of Darwin, Northern Territory, site of the proposed base. Delays meant that No. 12 (General Purpose) Squadron was not formed until 6 February 1939 at Laverton. Jones had by now moved on to another posting but Eaton took up the squadron's command as planned. Promoted to wing commander on 1 March, he and his equipment officer, Flying Officer Hocking, were ordered to build up the unit as quickly as possible, and established an initial complement of fourteen officers and 120 airmen, plus four Ansons and four Demons, within a week. An advance party of thirty NCOs and airmen under Hocking began moving to Darwin on 1 July. Staff were initially accommodated in a former meatworks built during World War I, and life at the newly established air base had a "distinctly raw, pioneering feel about it" according to historian Chris Coulthard-Clark. Morale, though, was high. On 31 August, No. 12 Squadron launched its first patrol over the Darwin area, flown by one of seven Ansons that had so far been delivered. These were augmented by a flight of four CAC Wirraways (replacing the originally planned force of Demons) that took off from Laverton on 2 September, the day before Australia declared war, and arrived in Darwin four days later. A fifth Wirraway in the flight crashed on landing at Darwin, killing both crewmen. ## World War II Once war was declared, Darwin began to receive more attention from military planners. In June 1940, No. 12 Squadron was "cannibalised" to form two other units, Headquarters RAAF Station Darwin and No. 13 Squadron. No. 12 Squadron retained its Wirraway flight, while its two flights of Ansons went to the new squadron; these were replaced later that month by more capable Lockheed Hudsons. Eaton was appointed CO of the base, gaining promotion to temporary group captain in September. His squadrons were employed in escort, maritime reconnaissance, and coastal patrol duties, the overworked aircraft having to be sent to RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, after every 240 hours flying time—with a consequent three-week loss from Darwin's strength—as deep maintenance was not yet possible in the Northern Territory. Soon after the establishment of Headquarters RAAF Station Darwin, Minister for Air James Fairbairn visited the base. Piloting his own light plane, he was greeted by four Wirraways that proceeded to escort him into landing; the Minister subsequently complimented Eaton on the "keen-ness and efficiency of all ranks", particularly considering the challenging environment. When Fairbairn died in the Canberra air disaster shortly afterwards, his pilot was Flight Lieutenant Robert Hitchcock, son of Bob Hitchcock of the Kookaburra and also a former member of Eaton's No. 21 Squadron. As senior air commander in the region, Eaton sat on the Darwin Defence Co-ordination Committee. He was occasionally at loggerheads with his naval counterpart, Captain E.P. Thomas, and also incurred the ire of trade unionists when he used RAAF staff to unload ships in Port Darwin during industrial action; Eaton himself took part in the work, shovelling coal alongside his men. On 25 February 1941, he made a flight north to reconnoitre Timor, Ambon, and Babo in Dutch New Guinea for potential use by the RAAF in any Pacific conflict. By April, the total strength based at RAAF Station Darwin had increased to almost 700 officers and airmen; by the following month it had been augmented by satellite airfields at Bathurst Island, Groote Eylandt, Batchelor, and Katherine. Handing over command of Darwin to Group Captain Frederick Scherger in October, Eaton took charge of No. 2 Service Flying Training School near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. His "marked success", "untiring energy", and "tact in handling men" while in the Northern Territory were recognised in the new year with his appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Eaton became CO of No. 1 Engineering School and its base, RAAF Station Ascot Vale, Victoria, in April 1942. Twelve months later in Townsville, Queensland, he formed No. 72 Wing, which subsequently deployed to Merauke in Dutch New Guinea, comprising No. 84 Squadron (flying CAC Boomerang fighters), No. 86 Squadron (P-40 Kittyhawk fighters), and No. 12 Squadron (A-31 Vengeance dive bombers). His relations with North-Eastern Area Command in Townsville were strained; "mountains were made out of molehills" in his opinion, and he was reassigned that July to lead No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School in Port Pirie, South Australia. On 30 November 1943, Eaton returned to the Northern Territory to establish No. 79 Wing at Batchelor, comprising No. 1 and No. 2 Squadrons (flying Bristol Beaufort light reconnaissance bombers), No. 31 Squadron (Bristol Beaufighter long-range fighters), and No. 18 (Netherlands East Indies) Squadron (B-25 Mitchell medium bombers). He developed a good relationship with his Dutch personnel, who called him "Oom Charles" (Uncle Charles). Operating under the auspices of North-Western Area Command (NWA), Darwin, Eaton's forces participated in the New Guinea and North-Western Area Campaigns during 1944, in which he regularly flew on missions himself. Through March–April, his Beaufighters attacked enemy shipping, while the Mitchells and Beauforts bombed Timor on a daily basis as a prelude to Operations Reckless and Persecution, the invasions of Hollandia and Aitape. On 19 April, he organised a large raid against Su, Dutch Timor, employing thirty-five Mitchells, Beauforts and Beaufighters to destroy the town's barracks and fuel dumps, the results earning him the personal congratulations of the Air Officer Commanding NWA, Air Vice Marshal "King" Cole, for his "splendid effort". On the day of the Allied landings, 22 April, the Mitchells and Beaufighters made a daylight raid on Dili, Portuguese Timor. The ground assault met little opposition, credited in part to the air bombardment in the days leading up to it. In June–July, No. 79 Wing supported the Allied attack on Noemfoor. Eaton was recommended to be mentioned in despatches on 28 October 1944 for his "Gallant and distinguished service" in NWA; this was promulgated in the London Gazette on 9 March 1945. Completing his tour with No. 79 Wing, Eaton was appointed Air Officer Commanding Southern Area, Melbourne, in January 1945. The operated off southern Australia during the first months of 1945, and the few combat units in Eaton's command were heavily engaged in anti-submarine patrols which sought to locate this and any other U-boats in the area. The Air Officer Commanding RAAF Command, Air Vice Marshal Bill Bostock, considered the sporadic attacks to be partly "nuisance value", designed to draw Allied resources away from the front line of the South West Pacific war. In April, Eaton complained to Bostock that intelligence from British Pacific Fleet concerning its ships' movements eastwards out of Western Area was hours out of date by the time it was received at Southern Area Command, leading to RAAF aircraft missing their rendezvous and wasting valuable flying hours searching empty ocean. There had been no U-boat strikes since February, and by June the naval authorities indicated that there was no pressing need for air cover except for the most important vessels. ## Post-war career and legacy Eaton retired from the RAAF on 31 December 1945. In recognition of his war service, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau with Swords by the Dutch government on 17 January 1946. The same month, he became Australian consul in Dili. He had seen an advertisement for the position and was the only applicant with experience of the area. While based there, he accompanied the provincial governor on visits to townships damaged in Allied raids during the war, taking care to be circumspect about the part played by his own forces from No. 79 Wing. In July 1947, Dutch forces launched a "police action" against territory held by the fledgling Indonesian Republic, which had been declared shortly after the end of the war. Following a ceasefire, the United Nations set up a commission, chaired by Eaton as Consul-General, to monitor progress. Eaton and his fellow commissioners believed that the ceasefire was serving the Dutch as a cover for further penetration of republican enclaves. His requests to the Australian government for military observers led to deployment of the first peacekeeping force to the region; the Australians were soon followed by British and US observers, and enabled Eaton to display a more realistic impression of the situation to the outside world. The Dutch administration strongly opposed the presence of UN forces and accused Eaton of "impropriety", but the Australian government refused to recall him. Following the transfer of sovereignty in December 1949, he became Australia's first secretary and chargé d'affaires to the Republic of the United States of Indonesia. In 1950, he returned to Australia to serve with the Department of External Affairs in Canberra. After retiring from public service in 1951, he and his wife farmed at Metung, Victoria, and cultivated orchids. They later moved to Frankston, where Eaton was involved in promotional work. Charles Eaton died in Frankston on 12 November 1979. Survived by his wife and two sons, he was cremated. In accordance with his wishes, his ashes were scattered near Tennant Creek, site of his 1929 forced landing during the search for the Kookaburra, from an RAAF Caribou on 15 April 1981. His name figures prominently in the Northern Territory, where he is commemorated by Lake Eaton in Central Australia, Eaton Place in the Darwin suburb of Karama, the suburb of Eaton that includes Darwin International Airport and RAAF Base Darwin, Charles Eaton Drive on the approach to Darwin International Airport, and the Charles Moth Eaton Saloon Bar in the Tennant Creek Goldfields Hotel. He is also honoured with a display at the Northern Territory Parliament, and a National Trust memorial at Tennant Creek Airport. At the RAAF's 2003 History Conference, Air Commodore Mark Lax, recalling Eaton's search-and-rescue missions between the wars, commented: > Today, we might think of Eaton perhaps as the pioneer of our contribution to assistance to the civil community—a tradition that continues today. Perhaps I might jog your memory to a more recent series of rescues no less hazardous for all concerned—the amazing location of missing yachtsmen Thierry Dubois, Isabelle Autissier and Tony Bullimore by our P-3s that guided the Navy to their eventual rescue. My observation is that such activities remain vital for our relevance in that we must remain connected, supportive and responsive to the wants and needs of the Australian community.

Drowned God

1996 science fiction adventure game

Drowned God: Conspiracy of the Ages is a 1996 science fiction adventure game developed by Epic Multimedia Group and published by Inscape. The game propounds the conspiracy theory that all of human history is a lie and that the human race's development and evolution were aided by extraterrestrials. The player attempts to uncover the truth through the course of the game by traveling to a variety of different worlds, interacting with historical and fictional characters, and solving puzzles. Drowned God is based on a forged manuscript written by Harry Horse in 1983, purported to have been written by 19th-century poet Richard Henry Horne, who shares Horse's birth name. After facing legal trouble and fines when he attempted to sell the text, Horse shelved it until playing Myst and The 7th Guest in the mid-1990s, whereupon he decided a first-person adventure game would be the best way to tell the manuscript's story. Producer Algy Williams hired a team of multimedia artists and programmers to help Horse develop Drowned God. Upon its release, the game sold well, but it quickly faded in popularity due to bugs and a lack of patches. Drowned God's concept and visuals were widely praised, while its gameplay, audio, and puzzles received more varied responses. A planned sequel never came to fruition. ## Plot ### Background Drowned God'''s concept centers around the idea that human history has been manipulated to cover up certain facts. The true history, according to the game, is that aliens from the Orion area of space seeded humanity on Earth thousands of years ago and have since guided its development. An ancient, highly developed civilization was lost millennia ago in the Great Flood. The library of Alexandria housed much of what game writer Harry Horse called "forbidden knowledge" before it was destroyed; the Knights Templar, whose membership included luminaries such as Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, preserved the information for centuries. In the 20th century, the Philadelphia Experiment opened a gateway into another dimension, first freeing the aliens Horse refers to as "the Legion", and an independent government group spent the subsequent decades in contact with the aliens following the Roswell incident. ### Story The game's plot begins in a chamber containing the Bequest Globe, a device which the player has recently inherited. The Globe is a giant brass cylinder full of gears, fronted by a clock face made of sliding and rotating plates comprising twenty-two Roman numerals, which represent the Major Arcana, with the Kabbalistic tree of life in its center. A voice welcomes the player and tells them the Globe is a gift, then explains that the player must unlock the secret of the drowned god. The player initially must enter their name into the device, which then displays a series of past lives the player has lived. The name is converted into its numerological equivalent. Above and below the central chamber are two other areas, called Kether and Malchut respectively, each of which houses a display screen with a mask-like face that provides the player with information about the next task. The motivations of the two organizations represented by the faces are murky, although it becomes clear they are acting in opposition to each other. Both masks refer to the player by their assigned number. The player must enter four different worlds through the Bequest Globe, each of which is an amalgamation of historical and fantastical elements and is named after one of the sefirot on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The player seeks to recover four lost artifacts: the Rod of Osiris, the Holy Grail, the Philosopher's stone, and the Ark of the Covenant. According to Horse, "The relics you're searching for are not what you think they are". The first world, Binah, includes aspects of Arthurian legend, including Morgan le Fay and the Knights Templar, as well as Stonehenge. The second, Chesed, features Mesoamerican ruins and a submarine interior. The third, Din, centers around an underground transit system, a steampunk carnival, and a mechanical maze. The final world, Chokhmah, takes place outside Area 51. Throughout the game, the player finds and uses Tarot cards to unlock new areas and gain more information about the true history of the world. Upon returning to the Bequest Globe between worlds, the player sees the Roman numerals in its display light up in relation to the cards that have been recovered. After recovering three of the lost artifacts, the player fails to recover the last one, the Ark of the Covenant, which takes the form of a nuclear warhead. The player is able to choose one of three endings, depending on whether they decide to enter a final doorway in the chambers of one of the two opposing factions represented by Kether and Malchut, or enter a new central chamber via the Bequest Globe. Choosing either of the two doors results in an ending in which the player is trapped in a dystopian world: either Kether's, a technological police state, or Malchut's, a society of forced genetic manipulation. Both have ominous men in black overseeing the proceedings. If the player instead chooses to open the central chamber, a scene with a group of grey aliens approaching is briefly shown, wherein they say, "We are coming, for we are Legion." All three options lead to the same ending credits, which feature a voice-over describing the murder of Osiris. ## Gameplay Drowned God uses a point and click interface and a first-person perspective typical of games similar to Myst of the mid- to late 1990s. The player navigates and interacts with the game world by clicking the mouse on different parts of the screen. The mouse cursor changes shape depending on the action clicking will perform: an arrow for moving to another location, a face with an arrow to pick up or place Tarot cards, and an Eye of Providence for activating or interacting with objects in the environment. Frequent cutscenes provide background information and advance the storyline. The game is filled with a variety of puzzles that must be solved to advance the story. These include memory games and mazes. Others involve competing against a computer-controlled opponent, completing a sequence in a limited number of moves, operating mechanisms, or using an inventory item. Puzzles do not all have to be completed in a precise order; there is some flexibility in terms of being able to move through game areas and work on different challenges. One of the best-received puzzles in the game involves arranging the pieces of a dialogue between the sculpted heads of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. The player listens to the randomly ordered statements made by each head, then decides how to chronologically arrange the statements to form a coherent conversation based on context. ## Development Harry Horse conceived the game's ancient planetwide conspiracy. Horse had previously received the Scottish Arts Council Writer of the Year award for his 1983 book The Ogopogo: My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster. He began forging documents that same year as a way to earn money. The story which became the basis for Drowned God was originally a phony manuscript Horse wrote in 1983, ostensibly describing events after the destruction of the lost city of Atlantis. The manuscript, dated 1846, was said to have been written by the English poet Richard Horne, who shares Horse's birth name. Horse's initiation into the concept of an alternate history came in the early 1980s, when he first encountered professor Ian Halpke, who explained to him that information from the Kabbalah and ancient Jewish texts "hide and encipher the secret", namely, human evolution was aided by extraterrestrial intelligence. According to Horse, Halpke believed the Ark of the Covenant was a nuclear device, and that humans and pigs share compatible genes. Initially, experts determined the manuscript was genuine, as the date Horse picked matched the time period Horne had been alive and active, and the manuscript's topics matched the poet's interests. Horse had written the manuscript without knowing any of these details. After his hoax was discovered, Horse held on to the text for the next decade, until he played Myst and The 7th Guest and decided the point-and-click adventure genre was a good match for his conspiracy theory-inspired ideas. He later said that while the story of Myst did not interest him, the game's artwork and the sense of immersion inspired him to immediately begin working on Drowned God in 1994. The game was originally commissioned by a division of Time Warner and was later taken over by Inscape when that division closed. Horse worked with Inigo Orduna and Anthony McGaw for six months designing the game, then cooperated with the game's artists and modelers until the project's completion. The game's producer, Algy Williams, hired puzzle expert Chris Maslanka, whose output he called "fiendishly difficult", to design the game's puzzles together with John Morris. Williams also employed sculptor Greg Boulton, who had previously worked on the Peter Gabriel video "Sledgehammer". Drowned God's music was written and performed by an ambient music duo operating under the name Miasma. William S. Burroughs was originally scheduled to narrate the game, but died just before he could begin recording. McGaw and Williams later founded the company Babel Media, which specializes in video game localization. ## Release Drowned God was released on October 31, 1996 for the Windows 95 operating system. Around the same time there was going to be a release for Windows 3.1x but those plans were cancelled. In its first two weeks, it sold 34,000 copies in the United States. It was one of the top ten best-selling video games in United States during the first month after its release, but bugs and poor support from the developers caused it to fall out of favor with gamers by December. By February 1998, the game had sold over 60,000 copies. Around the time of the game's release, Horse stated that its story was incomplete, and that the rest of the story would be revealed in a sequel called CULT, planned to center around Area 51. However, he died a decade after the game's release, and no sequel was ever completed. ## Reception Drowned God received mixed reviews, with many critics complimenting the game's ideas and imagery while giving a less favorable response to its audio, puzzles, and execution. GameSpot reviewer Vince Broady wrote that the game sounded very promising, and might "also raise awareness of the thread of deception that runs throughout recorded history." Steve Ramsey of Quandary said Drowned God presented its massive assortment of conspiracy theories entertainingly. Ray Ivey of Just Adventure called Drowned God "the strangest, creepiest, most psychedelic adventure game I've yet to come across." Although Ivey did not understand much of the game, he found it enjoyable, because "it made sense to the game's characters and creators." T. Liam McDonald of PC Gamer wrote that he was "fascinated by the strong sense of style and the intellectual approach to terrific subject matter". Steven Levy and Patricia King of Newsweek found the game to be "richly detailed and original". In 2012, Andy Hughes of Topless Robot put the game at the top of his list of "9 Surprising Literary References In Videogames". Hughes wrote that the game was one that could be played from start to finish "without having any idea what the hell's going on", noting its references to a wide variety of subjects, including Egyptian mythology, The Man in the Iron Mask, and the Bermuda Triangle. Broady complimented the graphics, writing, "Drowned God is loaded with freaky animations and unexpected visual twists". Ramsey praised the visuals and the audio, saying both contributed to the game's "shadowy and secretive feelings". His one significant criticism was that dialogue was difficult to hear, with no option to display text for it. Regarding the game's audio aspect, Broady said, "The soundtrack is less impressive, primarily because of overuse: The background effects drone on mercilessly, and many of the game's narratives (which are universally well-written and finely acted) must be listened to over and over again." The puzzles, according to Broady, were of uneven quality. He called some "hopelessly difficult" and others extremely derivative. By contrast, he viewed the Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton dialogue puzzle as "brilliant", but said, "Ideas as original as Horse's call for puzzles to match, not rehashes of things we've seen far too many times already." Ramsey thought the puzzles were challenging but not overly difficult, arguing "on almost every occasion I felt that I was making progress, and I never felt bogged down and hopelessly lost." He felt the puzzles were mostly well-integrated, and found those that were not did not detract from his enjoyment. Ivey remarked, "For puzzle lovers, Drowned God is a treasure trove. ... This collection of tricky puzzlers are challenging and frequently innovative." Broady panned the navigation for being confusing, counter-intuitive, and requiring the player to revisit locations multiple times. He concluded his review by saying, "The net effect is that the story—which made this game so intriguing in the first place—is almost totally lost, and that is a shame." GameSpot considered the game one of the most disappointing of 1996 in their annual recap, writing "the great premise is buried like the mysteries of the ages themselves under a mediocre Myst clone". Bob Strauss of Entertainment Weekly opined that the game tried to be too many things, and quipped, "the result is a game so obscure, you'd be better off perusing something more comprehensible—like the collected works of Zoroaster." Mark Reece and Brooke Adams of Deseret News also had mixed feelings about the game, calling it both "clever and deep" and "frustrating and difficult". McDonald wrote that he was "frustrated by the lack of good game play." Hughes called the pace of the game and its puzzles both "tedious" and "ponderous", but said it "had ambition out the genetically modified ears." The editors of CNET Gamecenter nominated Drowned God for their 1996 "Best Adventure Game" award, which ultimately went to The Neverhood. They wrote, "The National Enquirer meets Myst''. For the adventure gamer with a taste for mouse-pounding puzzles—it just didn't get much better than this."

Heaven Upside Down

Heaven Upside Down is the tenth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on October 6, 2017, by Loma Vista Recordings and Caroline International. The record had the working title Say10 and was initially due to be issued on Valentine's Day. However, the release was delayed by numerous events, most notably the death of Marilyn Manson's father, Hugh Warner, who died during production and to whom the album was later dedicated. The record has many of the musicians who performed on the band's previous album, The Pale Emperor (2015), including the producer Tyler Bates and the drummer Gil Sharone. Despite Manson's early implications, long-time bass guitarist Twiggy Ramirez did not participate on the album. He left the group following a sexual assault allegation by a former girlfriend. "We Know Where You Fucking Live" was released as a single in September, shortly followed by "Kill4Me", which became the band's highest-peaking entry on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Chart. The music videos for the album had celebrities including Johnny Depp, Courtney Love and Lisa Marie Presley. The single "Tattooed in Reverse" also entered the mainstream rock chart, making Heaven Upside Down the band's first album since Mechanical Animalsin 1998 to chart more than one song there. The album received positive reviews from music critics upon release, with several publications saying it continued a creative resurgence that began with the previous album. It was also a commercial success, debuting at number eight on the Billboard 200 and charting in the top ten in most of the major markets. In Australia, it was the band's highest-charting album since Mechanical Animals, and its first top 10 studio album in the United Kingdom since The Golden Age of Grotesque in 2003. Manson suffered several injuries that delayed the Heaven Upside Down Tour. The band embarked on two co-headlining tours with Rob Zombie: Twins of Evil: The Second Coming Tour and Twins of Evil: Hell Never Dies Tour. To promote the former, the two bands collaborated on a cover version of The Beatles song "Helter Skelter". Manson issued three other cover versions on soundtracks during the album's promotional cycle: "Stigmata", "God's Gonna Cut You Down" and "Cry Little Sister". ## Background and recording Marilyn Manson met Tyler Bates, the score composer of the TV series Californication, while playing a fictionalized version of himself in the season finale of the sixth season of the series. The two then collaborated on the band's ninth studio album, the blues-influenced The Pale Emperor (2015), which was described by numerous publications as the best album the band had released in over a decade. In July 2016, Manson received the 'Icon Award' at the APMAs, where he revealed several details about the follow-up, such as its working title of Say10 and a tentative Valentine's Day release date. He explained that the title originated from a note written in one of his workbooks from his time as a student at GlenOak High School. Manson doubted whether Bates would collaborate with him again following The Pale Emperor, saying relations between the pair deteriorated to such an extent during the supporting The Hell Not Hallelujah Tour that Manson threatened Bates on-stage with a box-cutter knife. During the tour, Manson regularly shattered glass bottles on-stage so he could cut himself. Bates, who recently announced his leaving the tour to pursue other projects, an announcement that he said saddened Manson, confronted the vocalist during a concert when he realized the shards of glass were hitting drummer Gil Sharone. Manson responded by threatening Bates with a box-cutter, to which Bates replied "You fucking come near me and I'll kill you with that box cutter". Despite the confrontation, Bates agreed to work with the band, and renamed his music publishing company Box Cutter Music in honor of the incident. On May 8, 2017, Manson announced the album had been renamed Heaven Upside Down, and said recording had been completed. He elaborated on the meaning of the new title: "I was going to call the record SAY10, but I didn't feel that that defined the album. I had the lyrics written for the song 'Heaven Upside Down', and I thought that defined the record more so because of the idea of time as a flat circle, constellations being defined by the negative space—the blackness; the idea of looking at something from an opposite point of view." As was the case with The Pale Emperor, Manson and Bates worked on the record while the latter was composing score material for the American television series Salem; the third season of which featured Manson as a recurring cast member. Parts of the album were recorded in Louisiana, where he was filming scenes for the series. The record was produced solely by Bates, and recorded at Bates's Studio City recording facility Abattoir Studios, with live drums recorded by The Pale Emperor contributor Gil Sharone. Despite initially suggesting that longtime bassist Twiggy would contribute to the writing and production of the album, Manson later confirmed that he was invited but did not participate during sessions at Bates's recording studio. According to Manson, after listening to pre-recorded basslines performed by Bates, Twiggy responded by saying he would be unable to "play them any better, and that the record sounded great [as it was]". Manson and Bates largely improvised during their writing sessions. Bates said that songs were created "out of a conversation, essentially, just between [Manson] and I, and we make it pretty much on the spot. It's me making music right from my head, and the lyrics are developed by Manson right there in the studio with me." Manson described the collaborative process between the two as being "a very intimate, personal experience. ... We sit across from each other, with headphones on, we look each other in the eye when we're writing." Manson opted not to record his vocals from inside a vocal booth, instead recording them while sitting at Bates's mixing console; the majority of vocals on the album were recorded in single takes, with minimal overdubbing. Bates sought to incorporate the intensity of the band's live performances into the album's production, describing the record as "intense, fun and violent. It's more immediate than The Pale Emperor, much more aggressive, and definitely much more imbued with Manson's fucked-up humor." He also said: > I wanted the album to be a platform for Manson to return to journalism, and write about the stuff we talk about, which is the sickness and passivity that is permeating the annals of society. Terrorism, mass shootings, reluctance to change, abandonment, dogma, apathy, judgment—all of this is pervasive in shaping our daily life's experience. The music is imbued with frustration, sadness, and anger about all of this, and to explore this landscape effectively, the sounds and the riffs needed to be more cutting and abrasive than The Pale Emperor. Heaven Upside Down is comprised of the music we love. Goth and Industrial. King-size guitar riffs. Sex. Equal parts 'fuck you' and jagged humor. Act II. ## Composition and style Manson initially described Say10 as being a musical departure from The Pale Emperor, saying it was "pretty violent in its nature for some reason, and it's not emotional in the same way. It's got a chip on its shoulder." He called it "by far the most thematic and over-complicated thing that I've done", and indicated it would contain some of his most politically-charged lyrics, but denied the political lyrical content related to the election of Donald Trump by saying most of its lyrics were written before the 2016 US presidential election. He said he would not be voting in that election, and believed that – as an artist – he could make more of a difference with his music than with a vote. Manson dubbed Heaven Upside Down his "most precise and well-thought-out work", and compared its lyrics to those of Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000), noting the majority of lyrics on both records were initially written as prose. He additionally described it as a concept album, and contrasted it with The Pale Emperor: "The last album was Faust, Mephistopheles. For me, this would be Pilgrim's Progress". Lyrical themes and subject matter on the record range from politics, violence, sex and romance, chaos and isolation, and capitalism, religion, drugs, paranoia, fear and mental illness. Manson characterized Heaven Upside Down as a hard rock and punk rock album, in the vein of Killing Joke, Joy Division, Bauhaus, and David Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). Reviewers have additionally defined it as an industrial metal, punk rock, glam rock and gothic rock record. The title of opening track "Revelation \#12" is a reference to both the Book of Revelation and the Beatles song "Revolution 9". "We Know Where You Fucking Live" was the first song Manson and Bates recorded for the album; its lyrics reference state surveillance and drone warfare. "Saturnalia" was the final song written for the album. Manson described its lyrics as being "the real heart of the record." He was unaware of the severity of his father's terminal illness until two days before he died, on July 7, 2017, the same day the band finished recording "Saturnalia". Its lyrics contain numerous astrological and mythological references, specifically the astrological transit of Saturn – Saturn return – and the myth of Saturnus devouring his children. Manson conflated his father's death with the lyrical content: "Seeing my father dying, I felt like that was the circle of life that he'd want me to put the energy of death into rebirth, you know, the snake eating its own tail, Saturnalia, Saturninus, that whole concept." "Je\$u\$ Cri\$i\$" was described by Manson as "my résumé ... It's basically something I would say with a [sarcastic] shrug when someone asked me, 'What do you do?' 'Well, I write songs to fight and fuck to'." ## Release and artwork The album was not released on Valentine's Day, prompting increasingly aggressive responses from fans on social media platforms. Manson later explained several factors caused the delay, including Bates' schedule scoring films, Manson being unhappy with the quality of the record by that date, as well as the death of his father, to whom Heaven Upside Down is dedicated. Bates also said recording was delayed due to the band's touring schedule; the pair had completed just six songs before beginning a co-headlining tour with Slipknot in the summer of 2016. At least three tracks were recorded sometime after Valentine's Day: "Revelation \#12", "Saturnalia" and "Heaven Upside Down", with the album's name then being changed to the last song title. Prior to the record's eventual release, Manson posted a series of horror-themed videos on Instagram. The first of these was captioned "6:19. The time has come." Numerous publications hypothesized whether 6:19 referred to a June 19 release date, a Bible verse, or the Eat Me, Drink Me track "If I Was Your Vampire", which features the lyric "6:19 and I know I'm ready". The final video featured the Celebritarian Cross, an inverted variation on the Cross of Lorraine that had previously been used by Manson as a logo for his Celebritarian art movement in 2005; the symbol subsequently appeared on the Heaven Upside Down album cover. Heaven Upside Down was released worldwide on October 6, 2017, by Loma Vista Recordings in the United States, Caroline International internationally, and in Japan by Loma Vista in cooperation with Hostess Entertainment; Japanese editions contain a Mystery Skulls remix of "Kill4Me" as a bonus track. The booklet was printed on Bible paper, with the lyrics formatted to resemble biblical text. The record was mastered by Brian Lucey, the engineer who masters the majority of Bates's soundtrack work. According to Manson, Lucey was chosen because the album contains "some extreme experiments with sound. We were very particular in not allowing someone else to master it, who might accidentally eliminate them. We've got some very intense, alchemical, scientific, binaural sounds that sometimes even make me have a panic attack while I'm listening to it." These sounds are most prevalent in the title track and "Saturnalia", which Manson highlighted as centerpieces of the record. ## Promotion and singles The band initially included Manson on vocals with Bates and Paul Wiley on electric guitars, Twiggy on bass and Sharone on drums. They began the first leg of the Heaven Upside Down Tour on July 20, 2017, in Budapest, during which they debuted several new songs. During this leg of the tour, the group narrowly avoided injury in Moscow when their tour bus was involved in a collision with a semi-trailer truck, and Manson caused controversy in Eastern Europe when he referenced the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War during a concert in Kyiv, saying: "You just made Moscow sound like your bitch." The band performed in Moscow two days prior to the Kyiv concert. The North American leg began on September 27, and was scheduled to incorporate performances at several music festivals, including the Aftershock Festival on October 22, at which Nine Inch Nails was also scheduled to appear. Manson indicated a possibility of joining that band on stage during the festival, after he and Trent Reznor mended a longstanding feud. However, Manson was injured on several occasions during the tour. He sprained his left ankle after jumping off the stage at Pittsburgh's Stage AE on September 29. The following night, at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, he was crushed by a large stage prop, and lay unconscious on the stage for up to 15 minutes before being carried out of the venue on a stretcher to a nearby hospital. Manson had broken his fibula in two places, requiring a plate and ten screws to be inserted into his bone. The rest of the tour was then canceled, including their appearance at Aftershock, with all dates – excluding festival appearances – rescheduled to take place at the start of 2018. On October 25, Manson announced he had "decided to part ways" with Twiggy after the bassist was accused of sexual assault by former girlfriend Jessicka Addams, who was the vocalist for alternative rock band Jack Off Jill. Addams said the incident occurred while she and Twiggy were a couple in the mid-90s. He was replaced on subsequent tour dates by former Racer X and the Mars Volta bassist Juan Alderete. Alderete's first show with the band, at the 2017 Ozzfest Meets Knotfest festival in San Bernardino on November 5, found Manson performing in a wheelchair as a result of injuries he sustained earlier in the tour. Manson attracted criticism from some publications after he used a replica assault rifle as a microphone during the concert, with some commentators arguing it was insensitive considering the city had previously been the subject of a terrorism-related attack, and that the concert took place hours after the Sutherland Springs church shooting in Texas. The day of the 2016 US presidential election, a short teaser clip for "Say10" was released. Created by director Tyler Shields, it featured images of Manson holding a bloodstained knife while standing above a decapitated corpse lying in a pool of blood. Numerous publications noted the corpse was dressed in similar clothing to the kind regularly worn by Donald Trump—a suit and red tie. Manson would later say the decapitated figure in the video "wasn't anyone except if you wanted it to be them." A cover of Ministry's "Stigmata" was released on July 28, 2017, when it appeared on the soundtrack to Atomic Blonde. "We Know Where You Fucking Live" was issued as the album's lead single on September 11, after premiering on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show. Its music video was posted onto YouTube four days later, and was directed by Bill Yukich and Perou. "Kill4Me" was issued as the album's primary airplay single in the United States, where it went on to become their highest peaking single ever on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Chart. A series of advertisements created by Canadian pop artist Alex Kazemi to promote the album on Instagram were leaked online in late September, but were deemed too graphic to be used on the image hosting service. Music videos were subsequently released for "Say10" and "Kill4Me", both directed by Yukich and featured actor Johnny Depp. A cover of "God's Gonna Cut You Down" – recorded during the Heaven Upside Down sessions – was released on December 8 when it featured on the soundtrack to 24 Hours to Live. "Tattooed in Reverse" was serviced to active rock radio formats in the United States as a promotional single on March 6, 2018, and peaked at number 35 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Chart. This made Heaven Upside Down the band's first studio album since 1998's Mechanical Animals to contain more than one charting song on Mainstream Rock. The song's music video was directed by Yukich, and featured singers Courtney Love and Lisa Marie Presley. Yukich also directed the music video for the band's cover version of Gerard McMahon's "Cry Little Sister", released in June and recorded for the soundtrack of The New Mutants. The band embarked on a second co-headlining tour with Rob Zombie on July 11, 2018, titled "Twins of Evil: The Second Coming Tour", following the "Twins of Evil Tour" in 2012. On the day the tour began, Zombie and Manson released their cover of the Beatles track "Helter Skelter", which featured former Manson band members John 5 and Ginger Fish. Heaven Upside Down was the last album to feature Sharone, who departed the band in March 2019. He was replaced on the subsequent "Twins of Evil: Hell Never Dies Tour" by former Black Flag and Ho99o9 drummer Brandon Pertzborn. Shortly after the tour completed, Alderete was involved in a bicycle accident which left him with a diffuse axonal injury, a type of traumatic brain injury. A GoFundMe page was created to help cover the cost of his medical expenses. Despite this, Alderete is a credited performer on the band's next studio album, 2020's We Are Chaos. ## Critical reception Heaven Upside Down was well received by music critics upon release. Several publications said it continued a creative resurgence that began with their previous release, including AllMusic, which described it as a more satisfying album than the predecessor. This sentiment was echoed by both Loudwire, and The Boston Globe, which said: "No one expected this band to be doing some of its best work 20 years after it first shook up the zeitgeist, but here it is, continuing to evolve while toning down its more dated or cartoonish aspects. It just goes to show that a good album beats a good scandal every time." Bloody Disgusting said it was their best release since Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death), and Loudwire included it on their list of the best hard rock albums of 2017. Consequence of Sound commented on Manson's stage injury: "Had the worst happened, Heaven Upside Down is the kind of career-defining record that [he] just might want to leave as his last great opus anyway." Numerous publications lauded it for being a solid and concise album. Clash commended the quality of songwriting, complimenting the band for mixing various styles from their discography while saying the record fused three distinct genres from their previous work—the industrial of Antichrist Superstar, the glam rock of Mechanical Animals, and the blues of The Pale Emperor. Classic Rock's sister publication Metal Hammer described it as a solid album and said it illustrates how Manson can "still do what he got famous [for] doing: write biting, anti-establishment goth rock full of dark, playful imagery." Singapore's The Straits Times dubbed it the album of the week and described it as an exhilarating recorded. Critics praised the quality of lyricism found on the album, specifically in light of the presidential election of Donald Trump. ABC News said it saw Manson going back to basics, which they described as him "playing overtly with taboos and openly baiting his critics." The Evening Standard said the lyrical content may prove cathartic for people disillusioned with the election. The List made a similar point while comparing its lyrical content to Grand Guignol, a term used to describe graphic, amoral horror entertainment. Mark Beaumont of Classic Rock called it an astute album, saying the band "update and renovate the goth-glam dazzle of Mechanical Animals and Antichrist Superstar to better ram home [Manson's] top-line points: that religion is a pointless poison, politicians are society's true Satans and that fighting and fucking are the only reasoned responses to the current countdown to the Book of Revelations [sic] apocalypse that the world has chosen democratically for itself." The album received some mixed reviews as well, with several writers criticizing the lyrics to "Je\$u\$ Cri\$i\$". Spin criticized the "reprehensible" violent lyrical content found on the record, in light of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Conversely, Pitchfork said the lyrics were ineffectual, arguing they were easily eclipsed by the horror found in real life. Both Crack Magazine and PopMatters complimented the inclusion of punk elements, which the latter said helped the album match the intensity of the band's earlier work, but they were both critical of the lyrics. NME argued the record was too similar to the band's earlier work, and complained most of the songs lacked innovation. Drowned in Sound said that fans were "unlikely to see the power or the passion of Manson's classic run again – it's very difficult to bottle lightning twice ... That said, [Manson] seems to have settled after many years of free-fall. In Tyler Bates he has found a collaborator who knows how to get the best from his twisted mind. It's business as usual, but after a decade of disappointment, it's good to know business is doing well." ## Commercial performance Heaven Upside Down debuted at number eight on the Billboard 200 with 35,000 album-equivalent units, 32,000 of which were pure album sales, making it the band's seventh consecutive top ten album on the chart. Industry forecasters had predicted it was on course to debut in the top ten with sales of between 25,000 and 32,000 copies. It was the band's fourth consecutive number one album on Billboard's Top Hard Rock Albums, and their first to reach number one on Top Alternative Albums. It also debuted at number two on both Top Rock Albums and Top Album Sales, which acts as the current equivalent of the previous Billboard 200, before it was reconfigured to incorporate album-equivalent units. In Canada, Heaven Upside Down matched the peak of The Pale Emperor by debuting at number four. The record was predicted to enter the top ten of the UK Albums Chart, making it their first top ten album there since Eat Me, Drink Me peaked at number eight a decade earlier. The album debuted at number seven with first-week sales of 6,636 copies—their highest opening week figure since The High End of Low debuted with 7,746 copies in 2009 and their highest-charting studio album since The Golden Age of Grotesque peaked at number four in 2003. The record went on to peak in the top ten of multiple European markets, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Greece, Slovakia, and Switzerland. It peaked at number six in Spain, making it their highest-charting album there since The Golden Age of Grotesque peaked at number five. In France, Heaven Upside Down debuted with sales of 4,745 copies. Heaven Upside Down entered the ARIA Charts at number four, making it their sixth top ten album in Australia, and their highest-charting since Mechanical Animals reached number one in 1998. It entered at number six on the Official New Zealand Music Chart, their fifth top ten studio album there. On the Japanese Oricon chart, the album debuted at number 29 with first week sales of 1,805 copies. ## Track listing - "We Know Where You Fucking Live", "Say10" and "Kill4Me" are stylized in all caps; "Jesus Crisis" is stylized as "JE\$U\$ CRI\$I\$". - "Saturnalia" is 6:22 on the vinyl edition. ## Personnel Credits adapted from the liner notes of Heaven Upside Down. - Marilyn Manson – vocals - Tyler Bates – guitars, bass, keyboards, programming, engineering, recording, production, mixing - Gil Sharone – drums - Dana Dentata – backing vocals (track 9) - Roger Joseph Manning Jr. – clavinet (track 10) - Robert Carranza – mixing - Joanne Higginbottom – assistant engineer - Olivia Jaffe – hexagram sigil - Brian Lucey – mastering - Perou – photography - Brian Roettinger – art direction ## Charts ### Weekly charts ### Year-end charts

1789 Virginia's 5th congressional district election

Historic American electoral contest

The first election for Virginia's 5th congressional district took place on February 2, 1789, for a two-year term to commence on March 4 of that year. In a race that turned on the candidates' positions on the need for amendments (the Bill of Rights) to the recently ratified U.S. Constitution, James Madison defeated James Monroe for a place in the House of Representatives of the First Congress. It is the only congressional election in U.S. history in which two future presidents opposed each other. The race came about when former governor Patrick Henry and other Anti-Federalists in the Virginia General Assembly, who had opposed the state's ratification of the Constitution, sought to defeat Madison, who had been a strong advocate for ratification, and who wanted to become a member of the new House of Representatives; they had already defeated him in the legislative election to choose Virginia's first U.S. senators. They put forward Monroe, a young but experienced politician who was a war hero wounded at the 1776 Battle of Trenton, as a candidate for the seat. Monroe did not seek the contest, but once drafted campaigned vigorously. Despite bitterly cold weather, the two candidates debated outdoors; traveling after one such meeting, Madison suffered frostbite on his face. Although Madison had earlier stated that amendments to the Constitution were not necessary, during the campaign he took the position that they were, but should be proposed by Congress, rather than by an Article V Convention that Anti-Federalists such as Monroe and Henry supported. Madison won the election comfortably, to the satisfaction of his supporters such as President-elect George Washington. The race did not affect Madison's friendship with Monroe, who was elected to the Senate in 1790, and who would serve as Madison's Secretary of State and succeed him as president in 1817. ## Background James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 (March 5, 1750, Old Style), at the Belle Grove plantation near Port Conway, Virginia. He grew up on his parents' estate of Montpelier, and was involved in politics from a young age, serving on the local Committee of Safety at age 23. He represented Orange County in the Fifth Virginia Convention of 1776. After service on the Virginia Council of State, where he forged a lifelong friendship with Governor Thomas Jefferson, he was elected to the Second Continental Congress becoming its youngest member. In the following years, he became a strong advocate of closer ties between the states, and when in 1784 he returned home and became a member of the Virginia House of Delegates (the lower house of the Virginia General Assembly, the state legislature), he helped defeat a plan by Patrick Henry to impose taxes to support the Christian religion. He was one of Virginia's delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and helped persuade General George Washington to be its chair, which gave the convention the moral authority to propose a new plan of government. He was the originator of the Virginia Plan that became the basis of the federal government proposed by the convention. James Monroe was born April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the son of prosperous planters, Spence Monroe and Elizabeth Jones Monroe. By 1774, the year he entered the College of William & Mary, both his parents had died. In early 1776, he joined the Virginia militia and became an officer in the Continental Army, later that year being severely wounded at the Battle of Trenton. He left Continental service in 1779, and was made a colonel in the state militia. After the war, Monroe studied law under Jefferson and was elected to the House of Delegates in 1782, and to the Congress of the Confederation in New York in 1783, where he sought to expand the powers of that body. In 1784, Madison was told by Jefferson that Monroe wanted to begin a correspondence with him, beginning a relationship that would last until Monroe's death in 1831. The two men differed over whether their state should ratify the Constitution at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, with Madison in favor and Monroe against. Opponents deemed the proposed national government to be too powerful, and many wanted a second constitutional convention in order to place limits on it. Despite their efforts, Virginia narrowly ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788. Monroe, like Jefferson, believed that there needed to be a Bill of Rights protecting fundamental liberties from infringement by the new federal government. ## Selection of candidates Ratification had not been a major issue in the Virginia legislative elections of 1788, since it was expected to be decided by the Ratifying Convention that had just been chosen by the voters. When the General Assembly convened in October 1788, though, it had a majority of Anti-Federalist members, and was led by Henry, a member of the House of Delegates for Prince Edward County. Henry sought to avenge the Anti-Federalist defeat at the Ratifying Convention, and also believed Madison would not seek amendments, or would do so in a lukewarm fashion. On October 31, the General Assembly re-elected Madison to his seat in the lame-duck Confederation Congress, a body that would cease to exist with the coming of the new federal government. Henry's motives in allowing this are uncertain, with some historians stating it was to keep Madison in New York, far from the elections for Congress taking place in Virginia. Historian Chris DeRose hypothesizes that Madison's seat there was his if he wanted it, and his acceptance meant that he expected to remain in New York (where the new Congress would convene) and win his seat in Virginia without needing to campaign. The Anti-Federalists were not seeking to prevent the Federal government from coming into existence as some Federalists alleged, for they could have blocked the necessary bills for elections for Congress and for presidential electors, but they were determined to have members of their faction elected to those posts. Madison, who sought election to the House of Representatives, yielded to Washington and the Federalist minority in the legislature and allowed his name to be put forward in the legislature's election for Virginia's two U.S. senators—until 1913, senators were elected by the state legislatures. Henry nominated two Anti-Federalists, Richard Henry Lee and William Grayson, while Madison was the sole Federalist named. Henry told the General Assembly that Madison was "unworthy of the confidence of the people" and that his election "would terminate in producing rivulets of blood throughout the land". Henry's nominees were elected, Lee with 98 votes and Grayson with 86, while the defeated Madison gained 77. The General Assembly turned its attention to dividing the state into congressional districts. Madison's home county, Orange, was placed in a district with seven others, five of which had elected representatives to the Ratifying Convention who had opposed ratification, while Orange and one other had voted in favor and one county's delegation had split its vote. The General Assembly required that candidates live in the district, a qualification not found in the federal Constitution. Fauquier County, closely associated with Orange both geographically and economically, had supported ratification, but was excluded despite the efforts of Federalists. Despite some stating that Henry had contrived a district in which Madison was sure to be defeated, Thomas Rogers Hunter in a journal article examined the question, and concluded, "the district was compact and bounded on all sides by natural geographic features. Simply put, Patrick Henry did not attempt to gerrymander James Madison out of a seat in the first U.S. Congress." Virginia's 5th congressional district consisted of the counties of Albemarle, Amherst, Culpeper, Fluvanna, Goochland, Louisa, Orange and Spotsylvania. Some of these counties were later divided, so the district that Madison contested also included the present-day counties of Greene, Madison, Nelson and Rappahannock. French Strother, a long-time Virginia legislator from Culpeper County who had opposed ratification at the Virginia Convention, was solicited as a candidate to oppose Madison, but declined. William Cabell, of Amherst County, was also considered as an Anti-Federalist candidate but Monroe was selected instead. Both Strother and Cabell threw their support behind Monroe. A resident of Spotsylvania County, Monroe was reluctant to run against his friend Madison, but was probably encouraged by Henry, George Mason and other Anti-Federalists, though discouraged by his uncle, Joseph Jones. His service in the Revolutionary War, and his political service after it, were electoral assets. Monroe wrote to Jefferson after the election, "those to whom my conduct in publick life has been acceptable, press'd me to come forward in this Govt. on its commencement; and that I might not lose an opportunity of contributing my feeble efforts, in forwarding an amendment of its defects, nor shrink from the station those who confided in me [would] wish to place me, I yielded." Monroe's reluctance clashed with his ambition and desire for honorable public service, and as his biographer, Tim McGrath, put it, "He truly did not want to run against his friend, but who could refuse Patrick Henry?" David O. Stewart, in his book on Madison's key relationships, takes another perspective: "A simpler explanation is more credible: Monroe disagreed with Madison over whether, how, and how soon the Constitution should be amended, and he thought he just might win the race." The selection of Monroe was enough to worry Washington: "Sorry indeed should I be if Mr. Madison meets the same fate in the district of which Orange composes a part as he has done in the [General] Assembly and to me it seems not at all improbable." Others were less concerned; Alexander Hamilton of New York wrote to Madison that if he was defeated, "I could console myself ... from a desire to see you in one of the Executive departments". Federalist Henry Lee wrote to him, "I profess myself pleased with your exclusion from the senate & I wish it may so happen in the lower house [in which case] you will be left qualified to take part in the administration, which is the place proper for you". Nevertheless, Henry Lee believed Madison would win, calling Monroe "the beau". Former Confederation congressman Edward Carrington wrote to Madison, assuring him that he need not seek election in another district, "each County [in the Fifth District] will have several active Characters in your behalf," and there was "every reason to think your Election will be tolerably safe at home". Madison disliked electioneering, but realized he would have to campaign hard to win the race. The Fifth District race would be the only congressional election in history to oppose two future U.S. presidents. ## Issues The largest issue in the campaign was the question of a Bill of Rights protecting personal freedoms as amendments to the Constitution. Madison's view had been that these were unnecessary as the Federal government had only limited power and that in any event, the new government should be allowed to operate for a time before changes were made to the Constitution. To take such a stance in the campaign would be political suicide, and Madison recognized that there was widespread support for such amendments. But he felt it to be important that Congress proposed them, believing that route to be a quicker, easier, and safer means of passage than an Article V convention, which was favored by the Anti-Federalists such as Monroe. Nevertheless, he was skeptical about the effect of such amendments, calling them "parchment barriers", ineffective if the Federal government was determined to bypass them. He told the voters that if elected, he would work diligently for the passage of a Bill of Rights. Although Monroe was unwilling to indulge in negative campaigning against his friend Madison, supporters of his such as Henry and Cabell did not feel so bound, and a number of pamphlets and letters were published against Madison, alleging that he supported direct taxation of individuals by the Federal government (he had supported including such a power in the Constitution for use in time of war or other need) and that he had pronounced the Constitution perfect and not in need of any change (he had admitted there were imperfections in it, but had not initially supported amending it with a Bill of Rights). Madison's earlier stances made it easy to depict him in this light. Madison's pledge to support a Bill of Rights if elected left the question of direct taxation as the major difference between them. Monroe believed the power of the Federal government to directly tax the citizens to be not only unnecessary, but injurious to American liberty. He felt the government could raise money by tariffs, by the sale of public lands, or by borrowing. Madison responded that were the Federal government unable to tax citizens directly, tariffs would be the major source of revenue, and this would disproportionately hurt the South, which had few manufactures and imported heavily from overseas. He also stated that having federal taxes paid in each state would help bind the nation together as giving each a financial stake in the Union's success. ## Campaign Madison had been in New York, helping to wrap up the affairs of the old Congress of the Confederation. He received letters from other parts of Virginia from those who believed the residency requirement unconstitutional, offering to have him run there, but he preferred to run in his home district, and he declined. A trip to Virginia on horseback or in a carriage would be personally hard on Madison, then suffering from a bad case of hemorrhoids. On December 8, 1788, he wrote to Jefferson (who was in Paris) that he would return to Virginia to campaign for his election, a decision prompted in part by warnings from Virginians that he could not win without personally fighting for the seat. He arrived at Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon, on December 18, for a visit that lasted until he returned home to Orange County and his estate, Montpelier, just after Christmas. From the time Madison arrived in Virginia, the weather was unusually cold and snowy; the candidates often had to speak in freezing conditions, and the last weekend before the election saw 10 inches (250 mm) of snow. Aware he was not an orator of Henry's quality, Madison launched a letter-writing campaign, advocating for the new Constitution; though initially taken by surprise, Monroe also set out his positions in letters. It was Madison's intent, in writing to key citizens in each community, both to enlist support, and have the recipients circulate the letters locally or publish them in local newspapers. For Monroe's part, according to DeRose, he "poured himself into the campaign with frenetic energy, determined to campaign everywhere, to personally engage voters, and to make liberal use of his pen to correspond with community leaders. From the first days of the race, Monroe wrote letter after letter to voters and mailed them to a county's prominent Anti-Federalists, who would then distribute them personally to the intended recipients." Strother wrote a letter in support of Monroe, calling him "a man who possesses great abilities integrity and a most amiable Character ... Considering him as being able to render his Country Great Services on this important occasion". On January 7, 1789, Virginians chose electors who would vote for the first U.S. president. The districts for this were not coextensive with congressional districts, since Virginia was entitled to 12 electors but only 10 congressmen. Still, six of the counties in the Fifth District were in the same district for choosing an elector, and the race featured a Federalist and Anti-Federalist, though both were pledged to vote for Washington for president. Goochland and Louisa counties were not in that electoral district, but Buckingham County was. The Federalist, Edward Stevens, was elected, and outpolled his opponent within the Fifth District, but both parties took hope from the result, with the Anti-Federalists cheered by the fact that Stevens had easily taken Spotsylvania County, where the local favorite Monroe would presumably do better. The candidates sought to appeal to the local religious communities, of which the Baptists were the most influential. That community had taken the position that the Constitution did not provide sufficient protection for their religious liberty. Madison wrote to one of their clergymen, George Eve, on January 2, 1789, stating that "it is my sincere opinion that the Constitution ought to be revised, and that the first Congress meeting under it, ought to prepare and recommend to the states for ratification, the most satisfactory provisions for all essential rights, particularly the rights of conscience [religion] in the fullest latitude, the freedom of the press, trials by jury, security against general warrants, etc." Eve became a powerful advocate for Madison against Monroe surrogates who sought the endorsement of Baptist congregations for their candidate. Madison's pledge of support for amendments defused much of the Anti-Federalist anger against him. The two men were quite friendly with each other, and decided to travel together between debates, riding from courthouse to courthouse, making speeches before large crowds. These debates showed the physical contrast between the tall, athletic Monroe, who had a full head of brown hair, and the short, slender Madison and his receding hairline. They often rode together, ate together, and lodged in the same room. In 18th century Virginia, Court Day, a different day in each local county, was not only an opportunity for lawyers and judges to try cases, but a social gathering, including fairs, markets, and other events. The candidates addressed those present, sometimes speaking for hours to the largest crowds they were likely to find during the campaign. On January 14, Madison reported to Washington that he had "pursued my pretensions much farther than I had premeditated; having not only made great use of epistolary means [letter writing], but actually visited two Counties, Culpeper & Louisa, and publicly contradicted the erroneous reports propagated agst. me". Henry Lee wrote to Washington three days later, "Mr Madison is gaining ground fast but still he is involved in much doubt & difficulty. Powerful & active supporters appear in every county for him—his presence has done good & will do more." The debate that DeRose deemed perhaps the most significant of the race took place one evening at the Hebron Lutheran Church in Culpeper (today in Madison County). The Lutherans, like the Baptists, had been persecuted in America, and generally voted as a bloc to maximize their influence. Monroe and Madison attended the worship service, after which there was musical entertainment featuring fiddles. They and the congregation then went outside, and the two candidates debated on the front porch as the congregation stood in the bitter cold, with snow on the ground, likely for hours. Riding away afterwards, likely home to Montpelier, Madison suffered a frostbitten nose. In his old age, former president Madison would tell the story of that night, and point to the left side of his nose, saying he had battle scars. ## Election White males who were 21 years of age or older and who owned 50 acres (20 ha) of unimproved land or half that with a house were eligible to vote in the Fifth District. Approximately 5,189 voters formed the district's electorate. Per the 1790 census, there were 11,231 free white males age over 16 in the district, so about half of free white men were able to vote. The total population (including women, slaves and children) of the district was 91,007, so the electorate made up less than 6% of the total population, and perhaps 12–15% of those aged over 21. There was no secret ballot in Virginia elections in 1789; voters entered the local courthouse and publicly declared their votes, to be recorded by a clerk. The elections were administered by county sheriffs, normally the senior justice of the peace who had not already served in that capacity. Due to the bitterly cold weather in the Fifth District, the sheriffs in some counties extended voting beyond February 2, allowing more voters to reach their county courthouse. This was not authorized by Virginia law, but had also occurred in the voting for presidential electors the previous month. To get out the vote, Madison's supporters sent wagons around to transport voters to the polls. They brought one very old man from a distance, and he listened to them talk and asked if the Monroe spoken of was the son of Spence Monroe, formerly of Westmoreland County. On being told he was, the man declared he would vote for James Monroe, for "I do not know James Madison", but Spence Monroe had once fed him, clothed him and sheltered him. Once the polls closed, the local sheriff went to the door of the courthouse and proclaimed the result. It took time for complete results to be compiled; partial returns were printed in newspapers. On February 10, the sheriffs of the eight counties of the Fifth District met at Albemarle's courthouse, as the county first named in the election statute, to certify the results. Their returns indicated that Madison won the election with 1,308 votes to 972 for Monroe. In Madison's home county of Orange, he received 216 votes to Monroe's 9, in Culpeper 256 to Monroe's 103; he won Albemarle County by 69 votes and Louisa by 104. Madison had given considerable attention to Orange, apparently spending the day of the polls there despite the urgings of some supporters to base himself for the day in a more populous county, and two-thirds of his margin of victory came from Orange. Strong Baptist support for Madison there contributed to the outcome. Madison had been able to hold down the margin in strongly Anti-Federalist Amherst to 246–145 for Monroe, who also took his home county of Spotsylvania by 74 votes, Fluvanna by 21 and Goochland by 1 vote. The Baptists favored Madison due to his record of support for religious liberty. Washington congratulated Madison on the "respectable majority of the suffrages of the district for which you stood." Monroe stated of Madison, "It would have given me concern to have excluded him." ## Aftermath and assessment After the election, Madison wrote to Jefferson, "It was my misfortune to be thrown into a contest with our friend, Col. Monroe. The occasion produced considerable efforts among our respective friends. Between ourselves, I have no reason to doubt that the distinction was duly kept in mind between political and personal views, and that it has saved our friendship from the smallest diminution." He wrote in later years, "Perhaps there never was another instance of two men brought so often, and so directly at points [of disagreement], who retained their cordiality towards each other unimpaired through the whole. We used to meet in days of considerable excitement, and address the people on our respective sides; but there never was an atom of ill will between us." Within ten weeks of the election, the two were exchanging friendly letters, and Monroe purchased for Madison four tickets in the Fredericksburg Academy lottery, one of which won. According to Stewart, "Barely thirty years old, Monroe had time to make his way. Losing to the prominent Madison was no disgrace." In the House of Representatives, Madison introduced and guided to passage the amendments that became known as the Bill of Rights. He broke with Washington over the administration's policies, and allied with Jefferson, helping gain the latter's election to the presidency, and became his Secretary of State in 1801. He succeeded Jefferson as president in 1809. Although defeated for Congress, Monroe's frequent court appearances as a lawyer kept him in the public eye in Virginia. In 1790, after Grayson's death, the General Assembly elected him to the U.S. Senate. He served thereafter in a number of offices, including, twice, Governor of Virginia, and in 1811 Madison named Monroe as Secretary of State. Monroe was elected president in succession to Madison in 1816, taking office the following year. Early Monroe biographer George Morgan wrote, "There have been hundreds of exciting congressional races, but was there ever another quite as curious as this?" Hunter stated, "Unlike most congressional elections, this one had significant ramifications, for had Monroe been victorious, our ultimate constitutional framework might have been quite different ... had it not been for Madison's tireless efforts, twelve would-be amendments—including what we now know as the Bill of Rights—would probably not have passed the First Congress in September 1789 and been sent to the states for ratification". Harlow Giles Unger, in his biography of Monroe, wrote, "By supporting the most important Antifederalist demand and pledging to sponsor a bill of rights in the First Congress, Madison had extended a hand of compromise to moderate Antifederalists and effectively separated them from Patrick Henry's radicals, who sought to emasculate the new central government." According to DeRose, "no residents of a U.S. congressional district have ever had a better selection of candidates since the 5th District of Virginia in the election of 1789." He commented, though, that had the Anti-Federalist Monroe been victorious, he would not have been able to persuade the Federalist majority in Congress to pass amendments, as did the Federalist leader Madison, and without such, ultimately the Union would have failed. DeRose wrote, "The high-stakes battle between two Founding Fathers would forever alter the trajectory of the young nation." ## Results ### Results by county

El Señor Presidente

1946 novel by Guatemalan writer Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974)

El Señor Presidente (Mister President) is a 1946 novel written in Spanish by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974). A landmark text in Latin American literature, El Señor Presidente explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society. Asturias makes early use of a literary technique now known as magic realism. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, El Señor Presidente developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town. Although El Señor Presidente does not explicitly identify its setting as early twentieth-century Guatemala, the novel's title character was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Asturias began writing the novel in the 1920s and finished it in 1933, but the strict censorship policies of Guatemalan dictatorial governments delayed its publication for thirteen years. The character of the President rarely appears in the story but Asturias creates a number of other characters to show the terrible effects of living under a dictatorship. His use of dream imagery, onomatopoeia, simile, and repetition of particular phrases, combined with a discontinuous structure, which consists of abrupt changes of style and viewpoint, springs from surrealist and ultraist influences. The style of El Señor Presidente influenced a generation of Latin American authors. The themes of Asturias's novel, such as the inability to tell reality apart from dreams, the power of the written word in the hands of authorities, and the alienation produced by tyranny, center around the experience of living under a dictatorship. On its eventual publication in Mexico in 1946, El Señor Presidente quickly met with critical acclaim. In 1967, Asturias received the Nobel Prize in Literature for his entire body of work. This international acknowledgment was celebrated throughout Latin America, where it was seen as a recognition of the region's literature as a whole. Since then, El Señor Presidente has been adapted for the screen and theater. The US Government, in particular the CIA attempted to suppress the book through numerous front organisations, such as the Congress for Cultural Freedom ## Background In a 1970 interview, the German critic Gunter W. Lorenz asked Miguel Ángel Asturias why he began to write and the novelist replied: > Yes, at 10:25 pm on the 25th of December in 1917, an earthquake destroyed my city. I saw something like an immense cloud conceal the enormous moon. I had been placed in a cellar, in a hole, in a cave or someplace else. It was then that I wrote my first poem, a song of farewell to Guatemala. Later, I was angered by the circumstances during which the rubble was cleared away and by the social injustice that became so bloodily apparent. This experience, at the age of 18, led Asturias to write "Los mendigos políticos" ("The Political Beggars"), an unpublished short story that would later develop into his first novel, El Señor Presidente. Asturias began writing El Señor Presidente in 1922, while he was still a law student in Guatemala. He moved to Paris in 1923, where he studied anthropology at the Sorbonne under George Raynaud. While living in France, he continued to work on the book and also associated with members of the Surrealist movement as well as fellow future Latin American writers such as Arturo Uslar Pietri and the Cuban Alejo Carpentier. The novel was completed in 1933, shortly before Asturias returned to Guatemala. Even though El Señor Presidente was written in France and is set in an unnamed Latin American country, governed by an unnamed President in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, there is still plenty of support linking the novel to the Manuel Estrada Cabrera era in Guatemala. For example, as critic Jack Himelblau explains, "Asturias [...] wrote his novel primarily with his compatriots in mind, who, undoubtedly, had lived through the tyranny of Estrada Cabrera from 1898 to 1920." Estrada Cabrera was notorious for his brutal repression of dissent in Guatemala, and Asturias had been involved in protests against his rule in 1920. Asturias integrated and reworked incidents from Estrada Cabrera's dictatorship into the novel, such as the torture of a political adversary, who had been tricked "into believing that his innocent wife had been unfaithful to him". Estrada Cabrera was eventually forced out of office as a result of popular disturbances and the intervention of U.S. and other foreign diplomats. Rather than go into exile, however, the ex-president opted to defend himself against criminal charges. In the ensuing trial, Asturias served as a legal secretary and so, as Gregory Rabassa's biographical sketch points out, he had the opportunity to base his own fictional leader—the President—on his observations of the disgraced Guatemalan dictator. As Asturias himself put it: > I saw him almost every day in the prison. And I found that there's no doubt that men like that have a special power over people. To the extent that while he was a prisoner people would say: "No, that can't be Estrada Cabrera. The real Estrada Cabrera escaped. This is some poor old man that they've locked up in here." El Señor Presidente was not published until years after it was written. Asturias claims that Jorge Ubico y Castañeda, the dictator of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944, "prohibited its publication because his predecessor, Estrada Cabrera, was my Señor Presidente which meant that the book posed a danger to him as well". Additionally, because Ubico was Guatemala's dictator while the novel was being finished, critics have linked him with the characterization of the President in El Señor Presidente. As Himelblau notes, elements of the book "could easily have been interpreted as reflecting [...] General Ubico's dictatorship". The novel eventually first saw the light of day in Mexico, in 1946, at a time when Juan José Arévalo was serving as Guatemala's first democratically elected president. Despite the manifest influence of Asturias's experiences in Guatemala under Estrada Cabrera and Ubico, and despite certain historical ties, critic Richard Callan observes that Asturias's "attention is not limited to his times and nation, but ranges across the world and reaches back through the ages. By linking his created world with the dawn of history, and his twentieth-century characters with myths and archetypes, he has anchored them to themes of universal significance." Asturias himself affirms that he "wrote El Señor Presidente without a social commitment". By this he means that unlike some of his other books, such as Leyendas de Guatemala (Legends of Guatemala) or Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize), "El Señor Presidente had a wider relevance because it did not focus so heavily on Guatemalan myths and traditions." Asturias depicts aspects of life that are common to all dictatorial regimes, and so establishes El Señor Presidente as one of his most influential works. ## Plot summary ### Part one The novel begins on the Cathedral Porch, where beggars spend their nights. One beggar, the Zany, is exhausted after being continually harassed about his deceased mother. When one of the President's loyal military men, Colonel Jose Parrales Sonriente, jeers the word "mother" at him, the Zany instinctively retaliates and murders the Colonel. The beggars are interrogated and tortured into agreeing that the retired General Eusebio Canales, once in the President's military, and the independent lawyer Abel Carvajal killed the Colonel because according to the President's men, there is no way "an idiot is responsible". Meanwhile, a delusional Zany flees "away down the shadowy streets in a paroxysm of mad terror". A rare glimpse of the President shows him ordering Miguel Angel Face, sometimes referred to as the President's "favourite", to help General Canales flee before he is arrested in the morning for the murder of Sonriente. The President, who presumably orchestrated the accusations for his own purposes, wants Canales to flee because "running away would be a confession of guilt". At the Two Step, a local tavern, Miguel Angel Face meets Lucio Vásquez, a policeman, and is inspired to tell Vásquez that he is kidnapping General Canales's daughter, Camila, as "a ruse to deceive the watchful authorities". He claims to be kidnapping Camila to cover up the truth of Canales's escape. Later, Vásquez meets with his friend Genaro Rodas, and upon leaving a bar they see the Zany. To Genaro Rodas's horror, Vásquez shoots the Zany. The aftermath of this scene is witnessed by Don Benjamin, a puppet-master, whose "puppets took the tragedy as their theme". Genaro Rodas returns home and discusses the murder of the Zany with his wife, Fedina de Rodas, and informs her that the police plan to arrest Canales in the morning. Meanwhile, Canales leaves Miguel Angel Face's home, exhausted and anxious about fleeing the country. Later that evening, Canales escapes safely while the police ransack his home and Miguel Angel Face sneaks in to bring Camila safely to the Two Step. ### Part two In the early morning, Fedina de Rodas rushes to Canales's house in an attempt to save him from arrest for the murder of Colonel Sonriente. She arrives too late and is found by the Judge Advocate, an aide to the President. He arrests her as an accomplice in Canales's escape, and tortures her in hopes of learning Canales's location. The soldiers smear lime on her breasts before giving her back her baby, which causes its death as it refuses to feed from "the sharpness of the lime". Back at the Two Step, Miguel Angel Face visits Camila. He tries to find her a home with her aunts and uncles but they all refuse to take her in for fear of losing their friends and being associated with "the daughter of one of the President's enemies". More is revealed of Miguel Angel Face's complex character and the struggle between his physical desires for Camila and his desire to become a better person in a world ruled by terror. Camila grows very ill and a boy is sent to inform Miguel Angel Face that her condition has worsened. He dresses quickly and rushes to the Two Step to see her. Eventually relieved of charges by the President, Fedina de Rodas is purchased by a brothel, and when it is discovered that she is holding her dead baby in her arms, she is placed in a hospital. Miguel Angel Face informs Major Farfan, who is in the service of the President, that there is a threat to his life. By this act saving a man in danger, Angel Face hopes "God would grant him Camila's life in exchange". General Canales escapes into a village and, assisted by three sisters and a smuggler, crosses the frontier of the country after saving the sisters by killing a doctor who harassed them with the payment of an absurd debt. ### Part three A student, a sacristan and Abel Carvajal, together in a prison cell, talk because they are "terrified of the silence" and "terrified of the darkness". Carvajal's wife runs all over town, visiting the President and influential figures such as the Judge Advocate, begging for her husband's release because she is left in the dark regarding what has happened to him. Carvajal is given a chance to read his indictment but, unable to defend himself against falsified evidence, is sentenced to execution. Miguel Angel Face is advised that if he really loves her then Camila can be spared "by means of the sacrament of marriage" and the two of them are soon married. Camila is healing and struggling with the complexities of her new marriage. General Canales dies suddenly in the midst of plans to lead a revolution when he is falsely informed that the President has attended his daughter's wedding. The President runs for re-election, championed in a bar by his fawning supporters, while Angel Face is entrusted with an international diplomatic mission. Camila and Angel Face share an emotional parting. Major Farfan intercepts Angel Face once he reaches the port and arrests him on the President's orders. Angel Face is violently beaten and imprisoned and an impostor takes his place on the departing ship. Camila, now pregnant, waits anxiously for letters from her husband. When she is past hope, Camila moves to the countryside with her young boy, whom she calls Miguel. Angel Face becomes the nameless prisoner in cell 17. He thinks constantly of Camila as the hope of seeing her again is the "last and only thing that remained alive in him" and ultimately dies heartbroken when he is falsely told that she has become the President's mistress. ### Epilogue The Cathedral Porch stands in ruins and prisoners who have been released are quickly replaced by other unfortunate souls. The puppet-master, Don Benjamin, has been reduced to madness because of the environment of terror he has been made to endure. Readers are given one more glimpse of the maddening state of life under a dictatorship. The epilogue concludes with a more hopeful tone, which is seen through a "mother's voice telling her rosary" which concludes with the Kyrie eleison; the call for the "Lord to have Mercy". ## Characters ### Major characters #### The President The fact that the novel's title character, the President, is never named gives him a mythological dimension, rather than the personality of a specific Guatemalan dictator. Literary scholar Kevin Bauman notes that readers are not let into the mind of the President; instead his appearance is "continually re-evaluated, re-defined, and, ultimately, re-constructed according to his perception by others, similar to Asturias's own novelistic (re)vision of Estrada Cabrera's regime". According to literary critic Hughes Davies, the President "represents political corruption but his presentation as an evil deity who is worshiped in terms that mockingly echo religious ritual elevates him to a mythical plane" and he is "an inverted image of both the Christian and Mayan deities since he is the source only of death". The dictator also has an element of mystery about him—it seems that no one knows where he is because he occupies several houses on the outskirts of the town. Mystery also surrounds the questions of when and how he sleeps. In the novel, rumors abound that he sleeps beside the telephone with a whip in his hand while others claim that he never sleeps at all. Because the appearance of the President is infrequent in the novel, readers' perceptions of him are formed through other, often minor, characters and episodes. As such, literary critic Himelblau states that "the novel does not develop the figure of the President as a fictive personage, does not follow the President through a series of actions or diegetic complications that lead to psychological-existential changes or transformations of his character". #### Miguel Angel Face Miguel Angel Face (orig. Spanish Miguel Cara de Ángel) is the novel's complex protagonist. He is introduced as the President's confidential adviser; there are many references to him as the President's favorite and he is repeatedly described "as beautiful and as wicked as Satan". As the plot proceeds readers see his struggle to remain loyal to the dictator in the face of the regime's increasingly horrific acts. Angel Face is faced with the challenge of reconciling his position of power among a terrorized people with his desire to fulfill a higher moral purpose. In the words of literary critic Richard Franklin, he "struggles to affirm his absolute existence and to relate this to an authentic self". Angel Face's linguistic intensity often reflects his inner moral struggle: > 'An animal makes no mistake in its sexual reckonings,' he thought. 'We piss children into the graveyard. The trumpets of Judgement Day—very well, it won't be a trumpet. Golden scissors will cut through the continuous stream of children. We men are like pigs' tripes stuffed with mincemeat by a demon butcher to make sausages. And when I mastered my own nature so as to save Camila from my desire, I left a part of myself unstuffed; that's why I feel empty, uneasy, angry, ill caught in a trap. Woman is the mincemeat into which man stuffs himself like a pig's tripes for his own gratification. What vulgarity' #### General Eusebio Canales General Eusebio Canales (alias Chamarrita or Prince of Arms) is forced into exile after being accused of the murder of Colonel José Parrales Sonriente. He appears to be organizing a guerrilla attack on the President, but dies of a broken heart after reading a false news report detailing his daughter's wedding to Miguel Angel Face, at which the President was apparently present. The character of the General comes into clearer focus while he is on the road to exile. Canales's road to exile also introduces readers to the desperate financial situation of three sisters who are being taken advantage of by a doctor who visited their ailing mother. This episode demonstrates that corruption and malice exist not just in the capital city but also in rural villages. #### Camila Camila, General Canales's daughter, is (somewhat reluctantly) rescued by Miguel Angel Face, when none of her relatives will take her in upon the flight of her father. Eventually Angel Face chooses Camila over his former master, the President. The two marry and she gives birth to his son, but only once Angel Face has disappeared. She and her son, whom she names Miguel, are last seen having moved to the countryside to escape the President's influence. She is the very picture of the adolescent who has been denied even the smallest margin of liberty, as critic Callan observes: "when Camila was thought to be dying a priest came to administer the sacrament of Penance. Her girlish faults stand out in the contrast with the evil that weighs upon the city. Indeed, one of the things she mentions in her confession is no fault at all: she went horseback riding astride, in the presence of someg Indians." #### The Zany The Zany (orig. Spanish el Pelele), also translated as the Idiot by some critics, appears only in the first four chapters and again at the end of chapter seven but serves a critical function in the novel. The Zany, who "looked like a corpse when he was asleep" and had eyes that "saw nothing, felt nothing" is critical to establishing the tone of the novel and triggering the novel's action. Critic John Walker argues that, by "choosing the Idiot as a representative of the innocent, the a-political, who suffer the abuses of a totalitarian regime [...] Asturias shows how dictatorship corrupts people and destroys their values to the extent that compassion for one's companion in distress ceases to exist." In fact, it becomes clear that the only happiness that the Zany experiences is through the memory of his dead mother. Asturias then shows how el Pelele, a mother-loving figure, "suffers at the hands of those who, long under the domination of the over-aggressive father figure, lack love and pity". Furthermore, el Pelele is a tool that allows readers to see the psychological effects of living under a dictatorship ruled by terror. His murderous act seems to trigger the subsequent events of the novel and to impact on all the characters. Also important is the fact that the one moment of complete happiness experienced by the Zany in the novel takes place while he is in a dream-like state. Walker argues that this serves to highlight the harsh, nightmarish world of reality in which he has been forced to live. ### Minor characters The novel includes a host of minor characters who, in Richard Franklin's words, "grope for the means to assert the validity of self and to anchor this individuality in a nightmare which constantly faces it with black nothingness". These characters range from Colonel José Parrales Sonriente, otherwise known as the "man with the little mule", whose murder at the Cathedral Porch opens the novel, to a series of beggars, prisoners, minor officials, relatives, flatterers, barkeepers and prostitutes. Some of these are tragic figures, such as Fedina de Rodas, who readers see tortured and then sold to a brothel while she still clutches her dead baby in her arms. Others, however, provide comic relief. Sometimes they have colorful or playful names or nicknames, such as "Flatfoot" (a beggar), the "Talking Cow" (a woman who delivers a speech of praise to the President), or Doña Benjamin VenJamón, who, with her husband the puppet-master Don Benjamin, closes the novel with a lament for the demise of the Cathedral Porch. ## Genres ### Magic realism According to scholar Luis Leal, in the genre of magic realism, "the writer confronts reality and tries to untangle it, to discover what is mysterious in things, in life, in human acts." Magic realist writing does not create imaginary creatures or places; instead, the writer tries to display "the mysterious relationship between man and his circumstances". Leal further points out that in magic realism, "key events have no logical or psychological explanation. The magical realist does not try to copy the surrounding reality or to wound it but to seize the mystery that breathes behind things." He also clarifies that "magical realism is not magic literature either. Its aim, unlike that of magic, is to express emotions, not to evoke them". To many scholars, El Señor Presidente is a landmark Latin American novel because of Asturias's early use of magic realism, a literary technique often employed by acclaimed Latin American writers such as Gabriel García Márquez. In an interview with Asturias, Gunter Lorenz heralded Asturias as the inventor of magic realism, and even as its most successful practitioner. Asturias himself defines this style not as "a concrete reality but a reality that arises from a definitely magical imagination ... in which we see the real disappear and the dream emerge, in which dreams are transformed into a tangible reality". Richard Franklin argues that magic realism is most evident in Asturias's exploration and depiction of the innermost reality of the human mind. This exploration is combined with "the material content of an urban mass caught in the grip of an iron regime" throughout the novel. Franklin goes on to herald the synthesis of these two elements as "a real contribution to the novelistic genre of America". ### Dictator novel Asturias first wrote El Señor Presidente in response to the dictatorial rule of Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Because Asturias spent a decade writing the novel, the delay in its publication, and the fact that it never names its eponymous President, many scholars have noted that it could equally be taken to apply to the subsequent regime of Jorge Ubico. Moreover, since the novel's publication, it has been used to critique dictatorial rule throughout Latin America. In its examination of the nature of dictatorial power in general, it helped initiate the new genre of the dictator novel. As literary critic Gerald Martin argues, El Señor Presidente is "the first real dictator novel". The dictator novel is a genre that has developed as a vehicle for Latin American writers to critique concentrated authority. Assistant Professor of Spanish at Walsh University, Jorge J Barrueto, argues that El Señor Presidente has been heralded as epitomizing dictatorship, "a phenomenon perceived to be a natural and inherent trait in the region". According to Garcia Calderon, the legacy of colonialism in Latin America has often led to the rise of an absolute authority, which seeks to contain a nation's inner conflict. Once in power, the man in charge often seeks complete control; he often amends constitutions, dismantling laws which previously prevented his re-election. For example, in 1899 General Manuel Estrada Cabrera altered the Guatemalan Constitution which had previously prohibited his re-election. Typically, however, dictator novels attempt to examine the abstract nature of authority figures and to question the idea of authority in general instead of focusing on the rule of a particular dictator. Asturias's text marks a dramatic shift in narrative writing. Precursors such as Domingo Sarmiento's Facundo (1845) were judged on how adequately they reflected reality. With its stylized magic realism, Asturias's El Señor Presidente broke from this realist paradigm—it is an avant-garde novel that laid the foundation for many other authors to develop what is now a broad and extensive genre. ## Style According to Latin American literary scholar Gerald Martin, Asturias's El Señor Presidente, which was written and published before the Latin American Boom of the 1960s, uses a style now classified as the "new novel" or "new narrative". In this novel, Asturias breaks from the historic and realist style that dominated novels at the time. Martin argues that the novel "exemplifies more clearly than any other novel the crucial link between European Surrealism and Latin American Magical Realism. It is, indeed, the first fully-fledged Surrealist novel in Latin America." Richard Franklin contends that on occasion surrealist writing obscures meaning, but in El Señor Presidente Asturias avoids this flaw. His combination of rationalism with "a world of forms" creates "an imagery which reveals a deeper reality, one which is more deeply rooted in the human psyche". As such, Asturias's surrealist style highlights the modern disintegration of long-standing belief systems. Literary scholar Gabriele Eckart gives as an excellent example of Asturias's surrealist style his portrayal of The Zany's psychic processes in which "language sometimes breaks apart into incomprehensible sounds". This allows Asturias to present the real and imaginary, as well as the communicable and incommunicable, as non-contradictory. Himelblau also highlights how El Señor Presidente projects "reality in relative, fluid terms—that is it allows its characters to disclose the temporal setting of the novel's fictional events". In this regard, then, Himelblau notes that El Señor Presidente "is also, as far as we are aware, the first novel in Spanish America that seeks to render fictional reality of time as a function of point of view". The novel defies traditional narrative style by inserting numerous episodes that contribute little or nothing to the plot as the characters in these episodes often appear inconsistently. Instead of relaying the book's themes through characters, Asturias uses repetition of motifs and a mythical substructure to solidify the book's message. Asturias employs figurative language to describe dream imagery and the irrational. Literary critic Hughes Davies points out that Asturias frequently appeals to the reader's auditory senses. Asturias's often incantatory style employs "unadulterated poetry to reinforce his imagery through sound". This helps readers to understand the physical as well as the psychological aspects of the novel. According to Knightly, "few of Asturias's characters have much psychological depth; their inner conflicts tend to be externalized and played out at the archetypal level". More significantly, Asturias was the first Latin American novelist to combine stream of consciousness writing and figurative language. Hughes Davies argues that from the outset of El Señor Presidente, the gap between words and reality is exemplified through onomatopoeia, simile and repetition of phrases. Knightly notes that "animistic elements surface occasionally in the characters' stream of consciousness". For example, in the chapter "Tohil's Dance", Tohil, the God of Rain in Maya mythology, is imagined by Angel Face as arriving "riding on a river of pigeons' breasts which flowed like milk". In Angel Face's vision, Tohil demands a human sacrifice and is content only so long as he "can prevail over men who are hunters of men". Tohil pronounces: "Henceforth there will be neither true death nor true life. Now dance." As Knightly explains, this scene follows the President's orders for Miguel Angel Face to go on a mission that ends in his death, and is "a sign of the President's evil nature and purposes". Davies contends that these literary techniques, when "combined together with a discontinuous structure, give the text its surrealistic and nightmarish atmosphere". ## Major themes ### Reality vs. dream Asturias blurs the separation between dream and reality throughout El Señor Presidente, making it one of the novel's most prominent themes. Latin American writer and critic Ariel Dorfman notes that the mixing of dream and reality is partly a result of Asturias's frequent use of figurative language. This stylistic choice is reflected in the content of the story itself, which suggests that an important effect of dictatorial power is the blurring of dreams and reality. Dorfman also notes that the President is sustained by fear, which further blurs the distinction between reality and dream. This fear grants him the voluntary or involuntary support of others, enabling the President to exercise his mandates. Dorfman asserts that the President's use of fear elevates his mandates to legends. These legends are then able to "impose itself upon reality because men live it fully in a way to make sense of their humanity". One example of this theme, elucidated by Eckart, is a series of scenes leading to the arrest of the lawyer Carvajal. When the President decides to blame Carvajal for the murder of Colonel Sonriente, it is clear that Carvajal is confounded by the charges. Moreover, despite being a lawyer, Carvajal is unable to defend himself during the sham trial with "the members of the tribunal so drunk that they cannot hear him". As Eckart asserts, "to be captured and tortured without ever knowing why is another horrible feature of a dictatorship. For the victim, reality unexpectedly becomes unreality, no longer comprehensible by a logical mind." Therefore, the use of fear by a dictatorship blurs the line between reality and dream for the people being ruled. Asturias's ambiguous use of detail adds to the confusion between reality and dream. For example, the title pages of parts one and two state that they take place between April 21 and 27. Part three, on the other hand, occurs over "Weeks, Months, Years". While this time-scale initially appears very specific, no year is indicated. Furthermore, the novel is set in a country similar to Guatemala and includes references to Maya gods (such as in the chapter "Tohil's Dance") but no direct statement by any character confirms this. Bauman argues that Asturias, by "preferring instead to distance himself from the immediate historical reality and focus critical light on the internal problems", attends to what "he sees there". This enables Asturias to address a wider audience, not restricted to Guatemalans, that can relate individually to the experience of living under dictatorial rule. In obscuring reality, truth becomes unclear. As literary critic Mireille Rosello notes, it is the President who decides what is true, denying any other opinion, even if other characters witness an event with their own eyes or ears. Unlike the characters in the novel, readers are aware that the characters are relying on a notion of truth or reality that no longer exists under the dictatorship of the President. "Truth" does not exist before the President puts it into words, and even at that, the only "truth" under dictatorial rule is the words the President is speaking at any given moment—one cannot even safely repeat the President's versions of events. The characters are thus left unaware of what constitutes the "truth". ### Writing and power A major theme of the dictator novel concerns the use of writing as a medium of power. In El Señor Presidente, Asturias uses language to challenge dictatorial power. Throughout the novel the reader observes the authority of the President over the people through his control of what they write. In the chapter "The President's Mail-Bag", a stream of letters informs the President of peoples' actions. While many are "writing the truth" and turning in their fellow citizens, many others feel that "it is not safe to trust to paper". Writing is closely linked to authority and is a means to solidify power, because language can be manipulated into lies that eventually kill. For example, the President orders a newspaper to include the false statement that he attended the wedding of Camila, the daughter of General Canales. When the General reads these words and perceives them as truth, his heart is broken and he subsequently dies. Miguel Angel Face is also killed by the manipulation of words: he is told that Camila has become the President's mistress, and upon hearing this falsified news, he loses the will to live. These episodes in the novel demonstrate how closely language, the written word, and power are linked. The characters in El Señor Presidente lose their sense of reality, making it difficult for them to know whom to trust. As Rosello argues, "in this state of terror, language is deliberately used as a means of seducing the addressee into harmlessness, and has lost its function of conveying information". ### Hope In El Señor Presidente, hope is suppressed by the dictatorship. As the Judge Advocate states in the novel, "the President's first rule of conduct is never to give grounds for hope, and everyone must be kicked and beaten until they realise the fact". It can be argued that Camila represents hope in the novel because both her father and husband were able to persevere under the dictatorship by thinking of her; however, the President destroys this sense of hope with false stories. When the thought of her loyalty is eliminated, both her father and husband die because they have lost the hope of returning to her. Furthermore, Camila's happiness with her child and their escape to the countryside can be seen as the one glimpse of hope in an otherwise dark and disturbing ending. For critic Jean Franco, it is love that offers what little hope there is in the novel: "The system is undermined only by love—the love of an idiot for his mother, a woman trying desperately to save her husband from death." ### Tyranny and alienation The theme of tyranny and alienation shows how a dictatorship not only alienates and "others" the people in the country, but also prevents the country itself from achieving European modernization. In a 1967 essay, literary critic Ariel Dorfman argues that "dictatorship, which in El Señor Presidente manifested itself in the political realm, is now a dictatorship of fire of the word, but always a tyranny that men themselves ask for, adore, and help to build". Dorfman also notes that "The 'little human bundles' of Asturias's world end up destroying themselves, being disintegrated by the very forces that they themselves spoke." By this he means that the characters are undone by their own actions and words as the President uses and twists them. The tyranny of language perversely parallels the political oppression which is omnipresent in Asturias's world. Richard Franklin argues that "in a philosophical sense, Asturias has eloquently affirmed the validity of individual experience". Asturias shows how, under the conditions of dictatorship, characters slowly lose their human identities. The Zany, for instance, while fleeing the city, is described as running "aimlessly, with his mouth opened and his tongue hanging out, slobbering and panting". Just a few lines later, the Zany is "whin[ing] like an injured dog". In what is in part a critique of the book, Jorge Barrueto argues that El Señor Presidente depicts Latin America as a whole as "Other". Everyone from the President to the Zany displays this "otherness" as they cannot be civilized. Dictatorship produces Otherness, by dehumanizing its subjects, but is also itself presented as barbaric, absurd, and no more than an "imitation of the European ways". Thanks to phenomena such as dictatorship, Latin America appears to be a land where "Otherness" prevails and for this reason Latin America cannot "evolve" or reach truly European levels of modernity. For Barrueto, "this narrative's goal is to prove that Latin American societies, though they are aware of the blueprint of Modernity, are unable to act accordingly." ### Fertility and destruction According to Latin American literature scholar Richard Callan, the dichotomy between destruction and fertility is embodied in the opposition between the President and Miguel Angel Face. While the President represents sterility and destruction, his favorite, Miguel Angel Face, embodies fertility, a positive and generative force of nature. Callan notes that Miguel Angel Face's transformation from the President's favorite to a positive generative force is not deliberate. Instead, Callan argues that "it results from the birth of true love in his formerly barren heart. However, he is too engrossed in his love to notice the shift in his relationship with the President." The President, not surprisingly, identifies himself candidly with death. Examples from the novel include the death sentences he gives to Abel Carvajal (for a crime the President is fully aware the man did not commit) and to Lucio Vasquez, a man in his service that carried out his wish for the Zany to be killed and yet is still executed. In contrast to the President, Callan highlights Miguel Angel Face's association with love. The love that Miguel Angel Face develops for Camila identifies him with love and life, and leads to procreation—the birth of his son. Rosello argues that even before his transformation, Miguel Angel Face was aware of the President's destructive nature. As such, Rosello argues that Miguel Angel Face "knew from the beginning that the only 'safety' in the President's world is a form of self destruction: only by losing his identity and letting the President's mind invade his own could he hope to remain alive". So, when he failed to comply, he did indeed lose his life. ## Reception In Guatemala, El Señor Presidente received significant attention from the date of its first publication. Mostly this was from other left-wing writers and intellectuals, who recognized and praised both its stylistic innovation and its political commitment, if sometimes with the complaint that the novel was overly influenced by European modernism. But, as Dante Liano observes, "those in power have not been able to stand Asturias's voice". Critical reception elsewhere in Latin America was also enthusiastic. One of the book's first reviewers was María Rosa Oliver, writing in the influential Argentine journal Sur shortly after the novel's second edition was produced in Buenos Aires. She particularly praises the plot: the fact that the novel is more than simply a lyrical still life. Rather, she argues, El Señor Presidente "stirs our five senses." And her conclusion stresses the book's Latin American qualities, arguing that it "enchants us, stirs us, moves us, and softens us all at the same time, producing much the same effect as when we travel, eyes and heart wide open, around these Latin American lands or the pages that tell their history." Before long the novel's fame spread around the world. The first award Asturias received for El Señor Presidente was the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in 1952. El Señor Presidente has steadily garnered further acclaim. In the words of literary scholar Jack Himelblau, the book is "an avant-garde and critically significant novel in the history of Spanish-American fiction" and Latin American history and literature scholar Charles Macune includes El Señor Presidente in a list of prominent translated Latin American novels. For Macune, novels and novelists of Latin America are "both history makers as well as reflections of the region's history". Unlike Latin American newspapers and archival materials, translated Latin American novels are far more accessible to readers without a knowledge of Spanish. In fact, Macune shows that El Señor Presidente has been well-received not only in its original Spanish but also in its English translation. ### Nobel Prize In December 1967 Asturias won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his life's work, including El Señor Presidente. Upon receiving the prize, he gave a lecture regarding Latin American literature as both "testimony" and "instrument for struggle". In particular, he spoke about the possibility of forging a new style of novel in Latin America, drawing on the region's indigenous heritage. This new style would make the novel a vehicle of hope and light in what he termed "this night that threatens us now". It would be "the affirmation of the optimism of those writers that defied the Inquisition, opening a breach in the conscience of the people for the march of the Liberators". The Nobel Prize Committee, in awarding the prize, described El Señor Presidente in the following terms: > This magnificent and tragic satire criticizes the prototype of the Latin American dictator who appeared in several places at the beginning of the century and has since reappeared, his existence being fostered by the mechanism of tyranny which, for the common man, makes every day a hell on earth. The passionate vigour with which Asturias evokes the terror and distrust which poisoned the social atmosphere of the time makes his work a challenge and an invaluable aesthetic gesture. Asturias's home country celebrated his international recognition. In Guatemala his face soon adorned postage stamps, a street was named after him, and he received a medal. According to Kjell Strömberg in The 1967 Prize, "the whole of his little country was given over to rejoicing". Further admiration was expressed throughout Latin America, where Asturias's Nobel Prize was viewed as an accomplishment for Latin American literature as a whole, rather than the achievement of a single author or country. As scholar Richard Jewell notes, there had been substantial criticism that Latin American writers were being ignored by the Nobel committee. Beginning with Miguel Ángel Asturias in 1967, however, the academy selected four Latin American writers within twenty-four years. Biographer Gregory Rabassa, who has translated other works by Asturias, highlights the effects of the Nobel Prize on Asturias's subsequent work, saying, "[h]is winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967 gave him a long-awaited financial independence that ... enabled him to withdraw to his writing and the many aims and possibilities that [had] been on his mind for so many years". ## Adaptations El Señor Presidente has been adapted into three Spanish-language films and one play. The first of the films, filmed in black and white, was made in 1970, by Argentine director Marcos Madanes. It was originally shown at the 1970 Venice Film Festival. The cast included Pedro Buchardo as the President, Luis Brandoni as Miguel and Alejandra Da Passano as Camila. As in Asturias's novel, the action is instigated when the village idiot kills a jeering army colonel, and in response, the president decides to blame the murder on a political adversary, but from that point on the film diverges from the novel. In the film, an operative is sent to spread rumors about the accused but instead he falls in love with the accused man's daughter. Once this happens, the operative defies his loyalty to the president and helps the daughter and her father incite a revolution with what he knows about the corrupt leader. Asturias himself complained about the film: he "sent a telegram to the Venice Film Festival denying permission to show the feature, but the letter arrived a day late. The unfortunate audience then had to endure this malodorous melodrama." El Señor Presidente was adapted for the stage by playwright Hugo Carrillo, and first performed in a production of the Compañía de Arte Dramático de la Universidad Popular directed by Rubén Morales at the twelfth Festival of Guatemalan Theatre in 1974. It was a great popular success, with over 200 performances during its ten-month run, much longer than the two months of weekend performances that were standard for the festival, and the run broke Central American box office records. The production later toured Central America and other groups have also performed it, so that over 50,000 people have seen the play in over eight other countries besides Guatemala. Carrillo was notably concerned about the staging of the play by others; he grew angry at a Salvadoran production that changed a few scenes, and casting differences with Joseph Papp led to the cancellation of the play at the 1987 New York Latin American Festival (this canceled production was the origin of the English translation of the play, written by Margarita Kénefic, a student of Carrillo). The play was also critically acclaimed, receiving many awards and has been written of as the zenith of a "Golden Age" of Guatemalan theatre. The play engaged the politics of the time (the Institutional Democratic Party was then in power), and Carrillo felt it necessary at first to attribute the script to the pseudonym "Franz Metz", and had photos taken of someone portraying "Metz" with the director; on opening night, secret police came inquiring after the address of Asturias (who had died earlier that year), and the government started paying attention to the previews of plays in the next year. The second film adaptation, in 1983, was directed by Manuel Octavio Gómez, and was one of the last films made by this prolific Cuban film director. It starred French actor Michel Auclair as "El Presidente". The most recent film adaptation, directed by Venezuelan Rómulo Guardia Granier and produced by RCTV (Radio Caracas Televisión Internacional), was released in November 2007 and is the first film produced by RCTV in more than twenty years. This version paints the picture of a hopeless love story—one that is unable to succeed under the terrorizing and corrupt dictatorship. It therefore plays up what is only hinted at in the novel itself, the possibility that the President is driven at least in part by sexual desire. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this film version is the way in which it was immediately taken as a commentary on the present government of Venezuela. Director Granier divulged in an interview, "We had to film in secret in order to avoid being shut down." Antonio Blanco, who also worked on this adaptation, said that: "We plan to market the film as a Guatemalan story to avoid any problems with authorities." RCTV lost its terrestrial broadcasting rights in mid-2007 when the government of Hugo Chávez (who was democratically elected, but accused by opponents of harboring dictatorial tendencies) did not renew the network's license. ## Publication details A manuscript exists of the first draft of El Señor Presidente, which at that time (July 1933) was entitled Tohil. This is now in the National Library of Paris. "Tohil's Dance" is the title of chapter 37 of the finished work. The main differences between this draft and the published book can be found in chapter 12 ("Camila") and in the fact that the former lacks the latter's epilogue. The first published version of El Señor Presidente came out in 1946, while Asturias was semi-exiled in Mexico City. The publication was financed by Asturias himself, aided by his parents, as the manuscript had been rejected by the publishers to whom he had sent it. This first edition suffered from numerous typographical errors. These errors were only rectified in the third edition, published in Argentina in 1952, which also included numerous substantial changes introduced by Asturias himself. This edition is, therefore, the first definitive version of the book. As noted by Gerald Martin, editor of the 2000 critical edition, "measured in terms of its decisive historical influence," the third (Losada) edition is "easily the most important of them all". Selected editions: - 1946, Mexico, Costa-Amic (ISBN NA), hardback (First edition, original Spanish) - 1948, Argentina, Losada (ISBN NA), hardback (Second edition, Spanish) - 1952, Argentina, Losada (ISBN NA), hardback (Third edition, Spanish, corrected by author) - 1963, UK, Victor Gollancz (ISBN NA), paperback (Eng. trans. by Frances Partridge as The President) - 1964, USA, Atheneum (ISBN NA), paperback (Eng. trans. by Frances Partridge as El Señor Presidente) - 1972, UK, Penguin (), pub date 30 March 1972, paperback (Eng. trans. as The President) - 1978, France, Klincksieck, and Mexico, Fondo de Cultura Económica (ISBN NA) (Spanish, first critical edition, ed. by Ricardo Navas Ruiz and Jean-Marie Saint-Lu, part of Asturias's Complete Works) - 1997, USA, Waveland Press (), pub date August 1997, paperback (Eng. trans. as The President) - 2000, Spain, Galaxia Gutenberg, and France, ALLCA XX (), hardback (Spanish, critical edition ed. by Gerald Martin) - 2005, Spain, Alianza (), pub date 2 January 2005, paperback (Spanish

Pigeye shark

Species of shark

The pigeye shark or Java shark (Carcharhinus amboinensis) is an uncommon species of requiem shark, in the family Carcharhinidae, found in the warm coastal waters of the eastern Atlantic and western Indo-Pacific. It prefers shallow, murky environments with soft bottoms, and tends to roam within a fairly localised area. With its bulky grey body, small eyes, and short, blunt snout, the pigeye shark looks almost identical to (and is often confused with) the better-known bull shark (C. leucas). The two species differ in vertebral count, the relative sizes of the dorsal fins, and other subtle traits. This shark typically reaches lengths of 1.9–2.5 m (6.2–8.2 ft). The pigeye shark is an apex predator that mostly hunts low in the water column. It has a varied diet, consisting mainly of bony and cartilaginous fishes and also including crustaceans, molluscs, sea snakes, and cetaceans. This species gives birth to live young, with the developing embryos sustained to term via a placental connection to their mother. Litters of three to thirteen pups are born after a gestation period of nine or twelve months. Young sharks spend their first few years of life in sheltered inshore habitats such as bays, where their movements follow tidal and seasonal patterns. The pigeye shark's size and dentition make it potentially dangerous, though it has not been known to attack humans. The shark is infrequently caught in shark nets protecting beaches and by fisheries, which use it for meat and fins. The IUCN presently assesses this species as vulnerable. ## Taxonomy German biologists Johannes Müller and Jakob Henle described the pigeye shark and named it Carcharias (Prionodon) amboinensis in their 1839 Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen. Later authors reassigned it to the genus Carcharhinus. The type specimen is a stuffed female 74 cm (29 in) long, originally caught off Ambon Island in Indonesia, from which the specific epithet is derived. Several junior synonyms are known for this species, among them Triaenodon obtusus, which was based on a near-birth pigeye shark foetus. ## Phylogeny and evolution Since the pigeye shark so strongly resembles the bull shark, morphology-based phylogenetic studies have considered the two species to be closely related. Neither this nor any other arrangement is strongly supported by molecular phylogenetic research, which to date has been inconclusive regarding this shark's evolutionary relationship to other Carcharhinus species. Genetic analysis of pigeye sharks across northern Australia suggest that the evolutionary history of this species was affected by coastline changes during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 12,000 years ago). The patterns of diversity found in its mitochondrial DNA are consistent with the repeated splitting and merging of its populations as geographical barriers were alternately formed and inundated. The most recent of these barriers was a land bridge across the Torres Strait that reopened only some 6,000 years ago; as a result, significant genetic separation exists between the sharks found off Western Australia and the Northern Territory and those found off Queensland. ## Description The pigeye shark is a very robust-bodied species with a short, broad, and rounded snout. The small and circular eyes are equipped with nictitating membranes. The anterior rims of the nostrils bear medium-sized flaps of skin. The mouth forms a wide arch and has barely noticeable furrows at the corners. There are 11–13 (usually 12) upper and 10–12 (usually 11) lower tooth rows on each side; in addition, there are single rows of tiny teeth at the upper and lower symphyses (jaw midpoints). The teeth are broad and triangular with serrated edges; those in the lower jaw are slightly narrower, more upright, and more finely serrated than those in the upper. The five pairs of gill slits are of moderate length. The first dorsal fin is large and triangular, with a pointed apex and a concave trailing margin; it originates roughly over the posterior insertions of the pectoral fins. The second dorsal fin is less than a third as high as the first, and originates ahead of the anal fin. There is no midline ridge between the dorsal fins. The long pectoral fins are broad and slightly falcate (sickle-shaped), becoming narrow and pointed at the tips. The anal fin has a sharply notched trailing margin. The caudal peduncle has a deep notch on its upper surface at the caudal fin origin. The caudal fin is asymmetrical, with a well-developed lower lobe and a longer upper lobe with a notch in the trailing margin near its tip. The skin is covered by rather large dermal denticles, which become more tightly packed and overlapping with age; each denticle bears three to five horizontal ridges and five posterior teeth. This species is grey above and white below, with a faint pale band on the flanks. The second dorsal fin and lower caudal fin lobe darken at the tips, particularly in juveniles. An albino individual was caught off Queensland in 1987, which was the first known example of albinism in a requiem shark. An adult pigeye shark typically measures 1.9–2.5 m (6.2–8.2 ft) long, while the largest individuals reach 2.8 m (9.2 ft) long. The pigeye shark can be most reliably distinguished from the bull shark by the number of precaudal (before the caudal fin) vertebrae (89–95 in C. amboinensis versus 101–123 in C. leucas). Externally, it has a greater size difference between its dorsal fins (first-to-second height ratio \>3.1:1 versus ≤3.1:1 in C. leucas) and the notch in its anal fin margin forms an acute angle (versus a right angle in C. leucas). This species also usually has fewer tooth rows in the lower jaw (10–12 on each side versus 12–13 in C. leucas). ## Distribution and habitat Though widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical marine waters of Eurasia, Africa, and Oceania, the pigeye shark does not appear to be common anywhere. Existing records are patchy, and the full extent of its range may be obscured by confusion with the bull shark. In the eastern Atlantic, it is found off Cape Verde and Senegal, and from Nigeria to Namibia; there is a single Mediterranean record from off Crotone, Italy. It occurs all along the continental periphery of the Indian Ocean, from eastern South Africa to the Arabian Peninsula (including Madagascar, the Seychelles, and Mauritius), to Southeast Asia and northern Australia. Its range extends into the Pacific, northward to the Philippines and southern China, and eastward to New Guinea and some Micronesian islands. Tagging and genetic data indicate that pigeye sharks, particularly juveniles, are not strongly migratory and tend to remain in a local area. The longest recorded distance covered by an adult is 1,080 km (670 mi). The pigeye shark inhabits coastal waters down to a depth of 150 m (490 ft), favouring environments with fine sediment and murky water. It sometimes enters estuaries, but unlike the bull shark, it does not ascend rivers and avoids brackish water. The movements and habitat usage of juvenile pigeye sharks have been extensively studied in Cleveland Bay in northeastern Queensland. Young sharks live in the bay year-round, staying mostly in the eastern side where the input from three rivers produces strong currents and high turbidity. Individual home ranges are relatively small, averaging 30 km² (12 sq mi), and increase in size with age. The juveniles generally stay in water less than 40 m (130 ft) deep, with the youngest sharks spending the most time in the shallowest parts of the bay. They swim into the intertidal zone with the rising tide and depart as the tide recedes; this movement may relate to exploiting foraging opportunities on the submerged mud flats, or to avoiding predation or competition by staying out of the deeper waters occupied by larger sharks. There is also an annual movement cycle where the juveniles move closer to the river mouths during the dry season and farther from them during the wet season; since the rainy season brings a higher flow of fresh water into the bay, the sharks may be responding directly or indirectly to the resultant decrease in salinity and dissolved oxygen levels. ## Biology and ecology The pigeye shark is a largely solitary animal, though occasionally several individuals may be found at the same location. In the Mozambique Channel, it outnumbers the bull shark on the east side while the opposite is true on the west side, suggesting there may be competitive exclusion between these similar species. Parasites documented from the pigeye shark include the myxosporean Kudoa carcharhini, the copepods Pandarus smithii and P. cranchii, and the tapeworms Callitetrarhynchus gracilis, Cathetocephalus sp., Floriceps minacanthus, Heteronybelinia australis, Otobothrium australe, O. crenacolle, and Protogrillotia sp. Young pigeye sharks are potentially vulnerable to predation by larger sharks. The natural mortality for juveniles in Cleveland Bay has been measured at no more than 5% per year; this rate is comparable to that in juvenile bull sharks, and is much lower than in juvenile blacktip sharks (C. limbatus) or lemon sharks (Negaprion brevirostris). ### Feeding Though the pigeye shark will take prey from anywhere in the water column, it tends to hunt close to the sea floor. An apex predator, it feeds mainly on teleost fishes such as croakers, flatfishes, and cutlassfishes, and to a lesser extent on cartilaginous fishes, cephalopods, and decapod crustaceans. It has also been recorded eating gastropods, sea snakes, dolphins, and whale carrion. Other sharks and rays figure much more prominently in the diets of South African pigeye sharks than those from other regions; the types consumed include requiem sharks, catsharks, angel sharks, guitarfishes, stingrays, and eagle rays. ### Life history The pigeye shark is viviparous; like in other requiem sharks, after the developing embryo depletes its supply of yolk, it is sustained to term by its mother through a placental connection formed from the empty yolk sac. Mature females have a single functional ovary and two functional uteruses. Reproductive details vary among regions: off South Africa, the gestation period lasts about 12 months, with mating and birthing both occurring in late summer. The litters range from three to seven pups (average five) and the newborns are around 75–79 cm (30–31 in) long. Off northern Australia, the gestation period lasts 9 months, with birthing taking place in November and December. The litters range from six to 13 pups (average 9) and the newborns are around 59–66 cm (23–26 in) long. Young sharks can be found in shallow inshore environments such as bays until at least three years of age, suggesting this species uses these sheltered habitats as nurseries. As the sharks grow older, they venture farther from land into deeper water, more and more often, until they eventually disperse. This is a long-lived, slow-growing species; males grow faster and reach a smaller ultimate size than females. Sexual maturity is attained at around 2.1 m (6.9 ft) long and 12 years of age for males, and 2.2 m (7.2 ft) long and 13 years of age for females. The maximum lifespan is at least 26 years for males and 30 years for females. ## Human interactions Large and formidably toothed, the pigeye shark is regarded as potentially dangerous to humans, though it has not been implicated in any attacks. This species is caught infrequently on longlines and in gillnets, and is used for meat and fins. As a predator, though, the shark can accumulate ciguatera toxins produced by dinoflagellates within its tissues. In November 1993, some 500 people in Manakara, Madagascar, were poisoned, 98 of them fatally, after eating meat from a pigeye shark. This was the first recorded mass ciguatera outbreak caused by a shark, as well as the first with a significant death toll. The IUCN has listed the pigeye shark overall as vulnerable, while noting that its rarity may render it susceptible to overfishing. In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, small numbers of pigeye sharks are caught in shark nets set up to protect beaches. The catch rate and the average size of sharks caught both decreased between 1978 and 1998, leading to concerns that the local population may be depleted. Thus, the IUCN has given this species a regional assessment of Near Threatened in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

Martha Layne Collins

American businesswoman and politician

Martha Layne Collins (née Hall; born December 7, 1936) is an American former businesswoman and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky; she served as the state's 56th governor from 1983 to 1987, the first woman to hold the office and the only one to date. Prior to that, she served as the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, under John Y. Brown, Jr. Her election made her the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the U.S. She was considered as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election, but Mondale chose Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro instead. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Collins worked as a school teacher while her husband finished a degree in dentistry. She became interested in politics, and worked on both Wendell Ford's gubernatorial campaign in 1971 and Walter "Dee" Huddleston's U.S. Senate campaign in 1972. In 1975, she was chosen secretary of the state's Democratic Party and was elected clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. During her tenure as clerk, a constitutional amendment restructured the state's judicial system, and the Court of Appeals became the Kentucky Supreme Court. Collins continued as clerk of the renamed court and worked to educate citizens about the court's new role. Collins was elected lieutenant governor in 1979, under Governor John Y. Brown, Jr. Brown was frequently out of the state, leaving Collins as acting governor for more than 500 days of her four-year term. In 1983, she defeated Republican Jim Bunning to become Kentucky's first woman governor. Her administration had two primary focuses: education and economic development. After failing to secure increased funding for education in the 1984 legislative session, she conducted a statewide public awareness campaign in advance of a special legislative session the following year; the modified program was passed in that session. She successfully used economic incentives to bring a Toyota manufacturing plant to Georgetown, Kentucky in 1986. Legal challenges to the incentives – which would have cost the state the plant and its related economic benefits – were eventually dismissed by the Kentucky Supreme Court. The state experienced record economic growth under Collins's leadership. At the time, Kentucky governors were not eligible for reelection. Collins taught at several universities after her four-year term as governor. From 1990 to 1996, she was the president of Saint Catharine College near Springfield, Kentucky. The 1993 conviction of Collins's husband, Dr. Bill Collins, in an influence-peddling scandal, damaged her hopes for a return to political life. Prior to her husband's conviction it had been rumored that she would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate, or would take a position in the administration of President Bill Clinton. From 1998 to 2012, Collins served as an executive scholar-in-residence at Georgetown College. ## Early life Martha Layne Hall was born December 7, 1936, in Bagdad, Kentucky, the only child of Everett and Mary (Taylor) Hall. When Martha Layne was in the sixth grade, her family moved to Shelbyville, Kentucky, and opened the Hall-Taylor Funeral Home. Martha Layne was involved in numerous extracurricular activities both in school and at the local Baptist church. Her parents were active in local politics, working for the campaigns of several Democratic candidates, and Hall frequently joined them, stuffing envelopes and delivering pamphlets door-to-door. Martha Layne attended Shelbyville High School where she was a good student and a cheerleader. She frequently competed in beauty pageants and won the title of Shelby County Tobacco Festival Queen in 1954. After high school, Hall enrolled at Lindenwood College, then an all-woman college in Saint Charles, Missouri (It is now a co-ed university). After one year at Lindenwood, she transferred to the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky. She was active in many clubs, including the Chi Omega social sorority, the Baptist Student Union, and the home economics club, and was also the president of her dormitory and vice president of the house presidents council. In 1957, Hall met Billy Louis Collins while attending a Baptist camp in Shelby County. He was a student at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, about 13 miles from Lexington; he and Hall dated while finishing their degrees. Hall earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics in 1959. Having won the title of Kentucky Derby Festival Queen earlier that year, she briefly considered a career in modeling. Instead, she and Collins married shortly after her graduation. While Billy Collins pursued a degree in dentistry at the University of Louisville, Martha taught at Seneca and Fairdale high schools, both located in Louisville. While living in Louisville, the couple had two children, Steve and Marla. In 1966, the Collinses moved to Versailles, Kentucky, where Martha taught at Woodford County Junior High School. The couple became active in several civic organizations, including the Jaycees and Jayceettes and the Young Democratic Couples Club. Through the club, they worked on behalf of Henry Ward's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in 1967. ## Early political career By 1971, Collins was the president of the Jayceettes; through her work there, she came to the attention of Democratic state senator Walter "Dee" Huddleston. Huddleston asked Collins to co-chair Wendell Ford's gubernatorial campaign in the 6th District. J.R. Miller, then-chairman of the state Democratic Party, commented that "She organized that district like you wouldn't believe." After Ford's victory, he named Collins as a Democratic National Committeewoman from Kentucky. She quit her teaching job and went to work full-time at the state Democratic Party headquarters, as secretary of the state Democratic party and as a delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. The following year, she worked for Huddleston's campaign for the U.S. Senate. In 1975, Collins won the Democratic nomination for Clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals in a five-way primary. In the general election, she defeated Republican Joseph E. Lambert by a vote of 382,528 to 233,442. During her term, an amendment to the state constitution changed the name of the Court of Appeals to the Kentucky Supreme Court; Collins was the last person to hold the office of Clerk of the Court of Appeals and the first to hold the office of Clerk of the Supreme Court. As clerk, she compiled and distributed a brochure about the new role of the Supreme Court, and worked with the state department of education to create a teacher's manual for use in the public schools, detailing the changes effected in the court system as a result of the constitutional amendment. The Woodford County chapter of Business and Professional Women chose Collins as its 1976 Woman of Achievement, and in 1977, Governor Julian Carroll named her Kentucky Executive Director of the Friendship Force. In a field that included six major candidates, Collins secured the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in the 1979 primary, garnering 23 percent of the vote. She handily defeated Republican Hal Rogers in the general election 543,176 to 316,798. As lieutenant governor, she traveled the state, attending ceremonies in place of Democratic Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., who disliked such formal events and often chose not to attend. By the end of her term, she declared that she had visited all 120 counties in Kentucky. Governor Brown was frequently out of the state, leaving Collins as acting governor for more than 500 days of her four-year term. As lieutenant governor, Collins presided over the state Senate. Members of both major parties praised Collins for her impartiality and knowledge of parliamentary procedure in this role. She was twice called upon to break tie votes in the Senate, once on a bill allowing the state's teachers to engage in collective bargaining and another on a bill to allow branch banking across county lines within the state; in both instances she voted in the negative, killing the bill. During her tenure, she also chaired the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors, becoming the first woman to hold that position. In 1982, she was named to the board of regents of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. ## Gubernatorial election of 1983 Nearing the end of her term as lieutenant governor, Collins announced her intent to run for governor in 1983. Her opponents for the Democratic nomination included Louisville mayor Harvey Sloane and Grady Stumbo, the former secretary of the state's Department of Human Resources. Collins had the support of many leaders in the Democratic Party, but just before the primary, Governor Brown endorsed Stumbo, charging that both Sloane and Collins would use their gubernatorial appointment power to dispense party patronage. Although this was a common practice at the time, Brown notably shunned it during his term. With 223,692 votes, Collins edged out Sloane (219,160 votes) and Stumbo (199,795 votes) to secure the nomination. Sloane asked for a recanvass of the ballots, but ultimately decided it would not change the outcome and conceded defeat. In the general election, Collins faced Republican state senator Jim Bunning, who was later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his achievements as a professional pitcher. The National Organization for Women, the National Women's Campaign Fund, and the Women's Political Caucus all refused to endorse Collins, citing her lukewarm support for the Equal Rights Amendment and her opposition to abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's life was in danger. But, Bunning was not personable on the campaign trail and had difficulty finding issues that would draw traditionally Democratic voters to him. His Catholicism was a political liability among the majority-Protestant voters. Collins won the election by a vote of 561,674 to 454,650, becoming the first, and to date only, woman to be elected governor of Kentucky. Following her election, Collins donated the surplus \$242,000 from her campaign coffers to the state Democratic Party. When Collins's husband was named state treasurer for the party – at an annual salary of \$59,900 – the state press charged that the move was a plot to funnel Collins's campaign funds into her personal account. (The previous Democratic state treasurer had received no salary during his tenure.) Following the media criticism, Dr. Collins resigned his post as treasurer. All of the involved individuals insisted that Governor Collins had not been briefed on the details of her husband's appointment. The media's criticism of Collins continued as many of the appointments to her executive cabinet went to what they characterized as inexperienced personnel who had held key positions in her past campaigns. When newly appointed Insurance Commissioner Gilbert McCarty approved a 17% rate increase requested by Blue Cross Blue Shield – a request that his predecessor had denied a few days earlier – Collins quickly countermanded the approval pending a public hearing on the matter. ## Governor In her first address to the legislature, Collins asked for an additional \$324 million from the Kentucky General Assembly, most of it allocated for education. The additional revenue was to be derived from Collins's proposed tax package, which included increasing the income tax on individuals making more than \$15,000 annually, extending the sales tax to cover services such as auto repair and dry cleaning, and increasing the corporate licensing tax. After opposition to her proposal developed among legislators during the 1984 biennial legislative session, Collins revised the tax package. She retained the corporate licensing tax increase, but replaced the sales tax and income tax modifications with a flat five percent personal income tax and phasing out the deductions for depreciation which corporations could claim on their state taxes. With the state still recovering from an economic recession and an election year upcoming, legislators refused to raise taxes. Collins eventually withdrew her request and submitted a continuation budget instead. Some education proposals advocated by Collins were passed, including mandatory kindergarten, remedial programs for elementary school children, mandatory testing and internship for teachers, and the implementation of academic receivership for underperforming schools. Among the other accomplishments of the 1984 legislative session were passage of a tougher drunk driving law, and a measure allowing state banking companies to purchase other banks within the state. ### Consideration for vice-president By virtue of her election as Kentucky's governor, Collins became the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the nation. The only two women in the U.S. Senate at the time were Republicans, and Collins was the only woman governor of any state. Shortly after her election, she appeared on Good Morning America, where she was asked about her interest in the vice-presidency and gave a non-committal answer. Four days after her inauguration as governor, she was chosen to deliver the Democratic response to President Ronald Reagan's weekly radio address. At a news conference following her speech, Collins was asked again if she would be willing to be considered as the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate in the upcoming election; she replied "No, not at this time." In mid-1984, the Democratic National Committee chose Collins to preside over the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. This engagement prevented Collins from chairing the state delegation to the convention, as was typical of governors. The party appointed Collins's son, Steve as state chair. Prior to the convention, Walter Mondale, the presumptive presidential nominee, interviewed Collins as a possible vice-presidential candidate before choosing Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. A writer for The Miami Herald later opined, based on interviews with Mondale advisers, that Collins was never given serious consideration by Mondale. He reported that she was included in his list of potential running mates primarily to blunt potential charges of "tokenism" in considering other women and minorities. ### Education proposals In January 1985, Collins renewed her push for additional education funding and changes by appointing herself secretary of the state Education and Humanities Cabinet. Following the announcement, Collins and several key legislators held a series of meetings in every county, advocating for her proposed changes and seeking information about what types of changes the state's citizens desired. At the meetings, Collins was careful to separate the issues of her proposed education plan and potential tax increases. She believed that opposition to increased taxes had prevented her previous package from being enacted. Collins announced a new education package in June 1985 that included a five percent across-the-board pay raise for teachers, a reduction in class sizes, funding for construction projects, aides for every kindergarten teacher in the state, and a "power equalization" program to make funding for poorer school districts more equal to that of their more affluent counterparts. After favorable reaction to the plan from legislators, she called a special legislative session to convene July 8 to consider the plan. After two weeks of deliberation, the General Assembly approved Collins's education plan, tripling the corporate licensing tax to \$2.10 per \$1,000 in order to pay for the package. The Assembly rejected a proposed five-cents-per-gallon increase in the state gasoline tax to finance other spending. Collins followed up her success in the 1985 special session with a push for more higher education funding in the 1986 legislative session. Lawmakers obliged by approving an additional \$100 million for higher education in the biennial budget. They also approved implementation of a pilot preschool program and the purchase of new reading textbooks, but failed to act on Collins's request for an additional \$3.9 million to improve the state's vocational education system. Legislators approved calling a referendum on a constitutional amendment – supported by Collins – to make the state superintendent of education an appointive, rather than elective, office. The amendment was defeated by the state's voters in November 1986, despite a Collins-led campaign in favor of it. The increased corporate tax intended to cover the cost of the increased education budget was, however, inadequate. In 1987, a plan to increase revenue through changes in the state income tax was abandoned when Wallace Wilkinson, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee who would go on to succeed Collins, announced his opposition to it. ### Toyota Assembly Plant In March 1985, Collins embarked on the first of several trade missions to Japan. She returned there in October 1985, and also visited China – a first for any Kentucky governor – to encourage opening Chinese markets for Kentucky goods and to establish a "sister state" relationship with China's Jiangxi province. Collins's efforts in Japan yielded her most significant accomplishment as governor – convincing Toyota to locate an \$800 million manufacturing plant in Georgetown. According to published reports, the Kentucky location was chosen over proposed sites in Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas. The agreement with Toyota was contingent upon legislative approval of \$125 million in incentives promised to Toyota by Collins and state Commerce Secretary Carroll Knicely. They included \$35 million to buy and improve a 1,600 acres (650 ha) tract to be given to Toyota for the plant, \$33 million for initial training of employees, \$10 million for a skills development center for employees, and \$47 million in highway improvements near the site. The incentive package was approved in the 1986 legislative session. State Attorney General David L. Armstrong expressed concerns that the incentives might conflict with the state constitution by giving gifts from the state treasury to a private business, but concluded that the General Assembly had made "a good-faith effort to be in compliance with the constitution". Given Armstrong's concerns, the administration employed general counsel J. Patrick Abell to file a friendly test case to determine the constitutionality of the incentive package. While the suit was pending, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the administration had failed to include the interest on the bonds used to finance the expenditures in its estimation of the cost; this, plus the cost overruns reported by the Herald-Leader, had already pushed the total cost of the package to about \$354 million by late September 1986. In October, Toyota agreed to cover the cost overruns associated with preparing the site for construction. Opponents of the economic enticements for Toyota joined the state's test suit. In October 1986, Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Ray Corns issued an initial ruling that the package did not violate the state constitution, but both sides asked the Kentucky Supreme Court to make a final decision. On June 11, 1987, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled 4–3 that the package served a public purpose and were therefore constitutional. Shortly after the announcement that Toyota was moving to Georgetown Collins, in her capacity as governor, condemned a portion of land belonging to real estate developer Gordon Taub. Taub owned 60 acres (24 ha) within the Toyota plant site and 4.2 acres (1.7 ha) were condemned to build a four-lane highway to the Toyota plant entrance. Taub challenged the condemnation, stating that the Commonwealth did not have the right to condemn private property for the use of a for profit, public corporation. At trial, Collins became the first sitting governor of Kentucky to testify in court. She was represented by former governor Bert T. Combs; Taub was represented by former governor Louie B. Nunn. This was also the first time in the history of Kentucky that two former governors represented opposing parties in a legal action. Later, Toyota set up several assembly plants across the state; near the end of Collins's term, the state Commerce Cabinet reported that 25 automotive-related manufacturing plants had been constructed in 17 counties since the Toyota announcement. In 1987, Collins promised \$10 million in state aid to Ford to incentivize the company to expand its truck assembly plant in Louisville. The state experienced record job growth under Collins's economic development plan, which included attempts to attract both domestic and international companies. The state's unemployment rate fell from 9.7 percent in October 1983 to 7.2 percent in October 1987; according to the administration's own figures, they created a net increase of 73,000 jobs in the state during Collins's tenure. ### Other matters during Collins's term On October 7, 1987, Collins called a special legislative session to close a deficit between state contributions to the worker's compensation Special Fund and disbursements. The Special Fund was designated for payments to workers with occupational diseases and workers whose work-related injuries could not be traced to any single employer. A plan proposed by Democratic state senator Ed O'Daniel was expected to provide the framework for legislation considered in the session. Under O'Daniel's plan, additional revenue for the Special Fund would be raised by increasing assessments on worker's compensation premiums for 30 years. Assessments for coal companies were increased more than those on other businesses because the majority of the claims paid from the Special Fund were for black lung, a breathing disease common among coal miners; consequently, it was opposed by legislators from heavily coal-dependent counties. Nevertheless, after nine days of negotiations, a bill substantially similar to O'Daniel's original plan was approved by the legislature and signed by Collins. Collins chaired the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway Authority and held that position when the waterway opened to the public in 1985. On May 10, 1985, she was named to the University of Kentucky Alumni Association's Hall of Distinguished Alumni. She also chaired the Southern Growth Policies Board, Southern States Energy Board, and was co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission. ## Activities after leaving office Collins's term expired on December 8, 1987, and under the restrictions then present in the Kentucky Constitution, she was ineligible for consecutive terms. In 1988, she accepted a position as "executive in residence" at the University of Louisville, giving guest lectures to students in the university's business classes. She also started an international trade consulting firm in Lexington. When Western Kentucky University president Kern Alexander resigned to accept a position at Virginia Tech in 1988, Collins was among four finalists to succeed him. Some faculty members publicly expressed concerns about Collins's lack of experience in academia, and she withdrew her name from consideration shortly before the new president was announced. After fulfilling her one-year commitment to the University of Louisville, Collins was named a fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics' John F. Kennedy School of Government, teaching non-credit classes on leadership styles once a week. Concurrent with her position at Harvard, Collins was named to the board of regents for Midway College in 1989; the following year, she was removed from the board of regents of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her removal was automatically triggered after she missed three consecutive board meetings between 1986 and 1989. In 1990, Collins accepted the presidency of Saint Catharine College in Springfield, Kentucky, becoming the first president of the small, Catholic college who was not a Dominican nun. College officials stated that Collins was recruited for the presidency to raise the college's profile. In 1993, Collins's husband, Bill, was charged in an influence-peddling scandal. The prosecution claimed that while Collins was governor, Dr. Collins exploited a perception that he could influence the awarding of state contracts through his wife. It was alleged that he exploited this perception to pressure people who did business with the state to invest nearly \$2 million with him. He was convicted on October 14, 1993, after a seven-week trial; he was given a sentence of five years and three months in federal prison, which was at the low end of the range prescribed by the federal sentencing guidelines. He was also fined \$20,000 for a conspiracy charge that involved kickbacks disguised as political contributions. Governor Collins was called to testify in the trial, but was not charged. The scandal tarnished her image, however, and may have cost her an appointment in the administration of President Bill Clinton. Collins was also rumored to be considering running for the U.S. Senate, a bid which never materialized following her husband's conviction. The Collinses reunited following Dr. Collins's release from prison on October 10, 1997. In 1996, Collins resigned as president of Saint Catharine College to direct the International Business and Management Center at the University of Kentucky. Later that year, she was a co-chair of the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention. When her contract with the University of Kentucky expired in 1998, Collins took a part-time position as "executive scholar in residence" at Georgetown College, which allowed her more time to pursue other interests. In 1999, she was named Honorary Consul General of Japan in Kentucky, a position which involved promoting Japanese interests in Kentucky, encouraging Japanese investment in the state, and encouraging cultural understanding between Kentucky and Japan. In 2001, Governor Paul E. Patton named her co-chair of the Kentucky Task Force on the Economic Status of Women. In January 2005, she became the chairwoman and chief executive officer of the Kentucky World Trade Center. She has held positions on the boards of directors for several corporations, including Eastman Kodak. ### Awards and honors Women Leading Kentucky, a non-profit group designed to promote education, mentorship, and networking among Kentucky professional women, created the Martha Layne Collins Leadership Award in 1999 to recognize "a Kentucky woman of achievement who inspires and motivates other women through her personal, community and professional lives"; Collins was the first recipient of the award. In 2003, Kentucky's Bluegrass Parkway was renamed the Martha Layne Collins Bluegrass Parkway in her honor; Collins also received the World Trade Day Book of Honor Award for the state of Kentucky from the World Trade Centers Association that year. In 2009, she was inducted into the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for her contributions "to strengthening economic and cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States of America". Martha Layne Collins High School in Shelby County was named in her honor and opened in 2010. ## See also - List of female governors in the United States - List of female lieutenant governors in the United States - Kentucky Colonel

Northolt siege

1985 hostage-taking in London

The Northolt siege took place in Northolt, West London, England, on 25 and 26 December 1985. It resulted in the shooting of the hostage-taker, Errol Walker. It was the first shooting by an officer from the Metropolitan Police's specialist Firearms Wing. After a domestic dispute, Walker forced entry into his sister-in-law's flat. He took the woman, her daughter, and his own daughter hostage and shortly afterwards fatally stabbed the woman. Negotiations eventually secured the release of Walker's daughter, but he still held the child of his murdered sister-in-law hostage with a large kitchen knife. Senior police officers were keen to resolve the situation without the use of force and adopted a policy of appeasing Walker, which included withdrawing armed officers from Walker's vision. Almost 30 hours into the siege, Walker ventured onto the communal balcony to pick up an abandoned riot shield. Armed police officers attempted to intercept him but he made it back to the flat before they reached him. The officers threw stun grenades through the windows and climbed through the kitchen window. One officer found Walker lying on a sofa, holding the knife to the child, and fired three shots, hitting Walker twice. Walker was knocked unconscious but both he and the girl survived. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, attempted murder, and other offences. Although the Firearms Wing had existed for almost 20 years, Northolt marked the first time one of its officers had opened fire, and the first use of stun grenades by British police. The incident demonstrated the unit's capabilities, which it had been developing for several years. One historian of the unit felt that the incident showed that the police had an alternative for crises that could not be resolved peacefully. ## Background British police officers do not routinely carry firearms. In 1985, armed support was provided by authorised local officers who underwent basic weapons-handling training and could access weapons when authorised by a senior officer. In London, the Metropolitan Police ("the Met") also had a Firearms Wing, designated D11—a team of specialist armed officers established following the shooting deaths of three police officers in 1966. D11 trained many of the local authorised officers and could be called upon to handle complex incidents. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, D11 was professionalising and developing its capabilities. Armed policing was a sensitive subject in 1985. Senior officers were keen to preserve the image of an unarmed police force and often prohibited the overt carrying of weapons. D11's capabilities were not widely publicised, even within the Met, and officers responsible for managing major incidents often did not hold the unit in high regard. Further, the Northolt siege took place less than three months after a black woman was accidentally shot and paralysed in Brixton, South London, during a police raid on her home by officers looking for her son. That shooting sparked two days of rioting. Errol Walker was born in Jamaica in 1956 and emigrated to England in 1968 where he became a career criminal. He had a lengthy criminal record, predominantly in theft and burglary. He married Marlene in 1982 and the couple had a daughter. Walker continued to commit crimes, expanding to include armed robberies. He was convicted of robbery, possession of a firearm, and false imprisonment later in 1982 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Walker became a police informant and was given an early release in 1985. He and his wife and daughter moved to Northolt, West London. According to neighbours, he was often violent towards Marlene. After a domestic incident which left her requiring hospital treatment, Marlene took their daughter to stay with her sister, Jacqueline, in her flat at Poynter Court in Gallery Gardens. Walker visited Marlene and the four-year-old child multiple times over several weeks but was refused entry into Jacqueline's flat. ## Siege On 24 December 1985, Walker arrived uninvited at Jacqueline's flat and persuaded Marlene to return home with him. There, he threatened Marlene with a knife, beat her, and repeatedly raped her. He returned her to Gallery Gardens the following morning, Christmas Day, and ordered her to collect their daughter but instead she went to a neighbouring flat to call the police. As two police officers arrived, they observed Walker climbing through a front window into Jacqueline's flat. Armed with a large kitchen knife, he took Jacqueline, her daughter, and his own daughter hostage. Once the police officers approached the flat, Walker came to the window, holding Jacqueline at knifepoint. He demanded that the police officers bring Marlene to him and threatened to kill Jacqueline if they refused. One officer left and returned with Marlene while the other attempted to reason with Walker. A few minutes into the negotiations, Walker slashed and stabbed Jacqueline multiple times and pushed her out of the front door onto the balcony. She was taken to hospital by ambulance but was pronounced dead on arrival. Additional police units soon arrived, including a specialist firearms team from D11. The first officers on the scene continued to attempt negotiations with Walker, who was prone to extreme mood swings. They brought Marlene to the window; Walker attempted to drag her into the flat and became further enraged when she managed to resist him. He repeatedly held the children out of a rear window, threatening to drop them, which prompted firefighters to set up blankets underneath in case it was necessary to catch them. Walker eventually released his daughter but continued to hold the other child, threatening to kill her. At one point, he cut the girl's hand and dangled her over the balcony, causing her blood to drip onto the firefighters. He later tied the girl to a chair and put a plastic bag over her head. The police gave Walker one of their radios to ease communication though he apparently used this to beat the girl. He also threatened to electrocute her with a wire he cut from a kettle. From an early point in the police operation, senior officers were determined to negotiate a peaceful outcome. D11 snipers were positioned in an overlooking building but were under orders not to fire except on the instructions of police commanders. Armed officers were also positioned in neighbouring flats but were later pulled back to the ends of the balcony in an attempt to appease Walker; they were instructed not to intervene if Walker appeared on the balcony. By the evening of Christmas Day, Walker was demanding the police bring him Marlene in exchange for the girl. Overnight, he barricaded the front door with the refrigerator. ## Rescue On 26 December, Walker appeared on the balcony with the knife. He peered into the window of a neighbouring flat, believing police officers were hiding inside. He then walked to the other end of the balcony and picked up a riot shield which had been abandoned by the police. Guided by commentary from police officers in overlooking buildings, several officers attempted to intercept Walker but, owing to a miscommunication, the officers were unaware of their position relative to Walker and found they were at the opposite end of the balcony. Three officers ran towards Walker who, on seeing them, picked up the shield and began running back to the flat. He reached the front door just before the officers and threw the shield at them, allowing him to escape into the flat. As other officers arrived, they attempted to break the door down, to no avail. They were ordered to withdraw but Walker was screaming "she dies! She dies!", referring to the child. Two armed officers threw stun grenades through the windows of the flat, knocking out the lights and leaving debris strewn across the floor. They then climbed through the kitchen window. In the darkness, they were able to identify Walker lying on a sofa in the living room, holding the child across his chest and holding the knife to her. As the officers entered the room, they challenged Walker, who stabbed the girl in the neck. Only a small part of Walker's body was visible under the girl. One officer, PC Tony Long, fired two shots at what he believed was Walker's shoulder; when this appeared to have no effect, he fired again at Walker's temple, knocking him unconscious. It later emerged that, of the first two shots, one had missed and one entered Walker's armpit; the third impacted his shoulder and ricocheted into the side of his head. ## Aftermath The incident lasted 29 hours. Its conclusion took place in front of a crowd and was captured by television cameras as the incident commander had been giving a press conference at the moment Walker appeared on the balcony. The officer who shot Walker grabbed the girl and took her out of the flat and to a waiting ambulance. Walker was presumed to be dead but regained consciousness a few minutes later, at which point he was arrested. He begged the armed officers still in the room to kill him. He was taken to hospital, where both he and the girl recovered from their injuries. Walker stood trial at the Old Bailey in December 1986 for the murder of Jacqueline and multiple other charges including wounding with intent and attempted murder. His plea of diminished responsibility was not accepted and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The incident demonstrated D11's capabilities. Although D11 had existed since 1966, the Northolt siege was the first incident in which an officer from the unit shot a suspect. It was also the first use of stun grenades by police in Britain. According to Stephen Smith, a former member of the unit and author of two books on its history, the incident proved that "the unit had matured and was capable of doing what was necessary to protect the public". Smith also felt that it demonstrated that not all incidents could be resolved by negotiation, and that D11 presented a "viable alternative" in such situations. ## See also - Hackney siege, a similar hostage situation in East London in 2002–3

Nimrod Expedition

First of three Antarctic expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton, 1907–09

The Nimrod Expedition of 1907–1909, otherwise known as the British Antarctic Expedition, was the first of three successful expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton and his second expedition to the Antarctic. Its main target, among a range of geographical and scientific objectives, was to be first to the South Pole. This was not attained, but the expedition's southern march reached a Farthest South latitude of 88° 23' S, just 97.5 nautical miles (180.6 km; 112.2 mi) from the pole. This was by far the longest southern polar journey to that date and a record convergence on either Pole. A separate group led by Welsh Australian geology professor Edgeworth David reached the estimated location of the South Magnetic Pole, and the expedition also achieved the first ascent of Mount Erebus, Antarctica's second highest volcano. The expedition lacked governmental or institutional support, and relied on private loans and individual contributions. It was beset by financial problems and its preparations were hurried. Its ship, Nimrod, was less than half of the size of Robert Falcon Scott's 1901–1904 expedition ship Discovery, and Shackleton's crew lacked relevant experience. Controversy arose from Shackleton's decision to base the expedition in McMurdo Sound, close to Scott's old headquarters, in contravention of a promise to Scott that he would not do so. Nevertheless, although the expedition's profile was initially much lower than that of Scott's six years earlier, its achievements attracted widespread interest and made Shackleton a national hero. The scientific team, which included the future Australasian Antarctic Expedition leader Douglas Mawson, carried out extensive geological, zoological and meteorological work. Shackleton's transport arrangements, based on Manchurian ponies, motor traction, and sled dogs, were innovations which, despite limited success, were later copied by Scott for his ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition. On his return, Shackleton overcame the Royal Geographical Society's (RGS) initial scepticism about his achievements and received many public honours, including a knighthood from King Edward VII. He made little financial gain from the expedition and eventually depended on a government grant to cover its liabilities. Within three years his southernmost record had been surpassed, as first Amundsen and then Scott reached the South Pole. In his own moment of triumph, Amundsen nevertheless observed: "Sir Ernest Shackleton's name will always be written in the annals of Antarctic exploration in letters of fire". ## Origins Ernest Shackleton had been a junior officer on Robert Falcon Scott's first Antarctic expedition aboard RRS Discovery. He had been sent home on the relief ship Morning in 1903 after a physical collapse during the expedition's main southern journey. Scott's verdict was that he "ought not to risk further hardships in his present state of health". Shackleton felt this physical failure as a personal stigma, and on his return to England he was determined to prove himself, in the words of Discovery's second-in command Albert Armitage, as "a better man than Scott". He nevertheless declined the opportunity of a swift Antarctic return as chief officer of Discovery's second relief ship Terra Nova, after helping to fit her out; he also helped to equip Uruguay, the ship being prepared for the relief of Otto Nordenskjold's expedition, stranded in the Weddell Sea. During the next few years, while nursing intermittent hopes of resuming his Antarctic career, Shackleton pursued other options. In 1906 he was working for the industrial magnate Sir William Beardmore as a public relations officer. According to his biographer Roland Huntford, the references to Shackleton's physical breakdown made in Scott's The Voyage of the Discovery, published in 1905, reopened the wounds to Shackleton's pride. It became a personal mission that he should return to the Antarctic and outperform Scott. Shackleton began looking for potential backers for an expedition of his own; his initial plans appear in an unpublished document dated early 1906. These include a cost estimate of £17,000 (updated value £) for the entire expedition. He received his first promise of financial backing when early in 1907 his employer, Beardmore, offered a £7,000 loan guarantee (updated value £). With this in hand, Shackleton felt confident enough to announce his intentions to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) on 12 February 1907. One reason for Shackleton's sense of urgency was the knowledge that the Polish explorer Henryk Arctowski was planning an expedition, which was announced at the RGS on the same day as Shackleton's. In the event, Arctowski's plans were stillborn. ## Preparations ### Initial plans Shackleton's original unpublished plan envisaged basing himself at the old Discovery Expedition headquarters in McMurdo Sound. From there he proposed to launch attempts to reach the geographical South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole. Other journeys would follow, and there would be a continuous programme of scientific work. This early plan also revealed Shackleton's proposed transport methods, involving a combination of dogs, ponies and a specially designed motor vehicle. Neither ponies nor motor traction had been used in the Antarctic before, although ponies had been used by Frederick George Jackson during the Jackson-Harmsworth Arctic expedition of 1894–1897. Despite Jackson's confused reports of his ponies' prowess, and contrary to specific advice from Fridtjof Nansen, the renowned Norwegian polar traveller, Shackleton decided he would take 15 ponies, later scaled down to 10. By the time he announced his plans to the RGS in February 1907 Shackleton had revised his cost estimate to a more realistic £30,000 (updated value £). However, the response of the RGS to Shackleton's proposals was muted; Shackleton would learn later that the Society was by this time aware of Scott's wish to lead a new expedition and that the Society wished to reserve its full approval for Scott. ### Nimrod Shackleton intended to arrive in Antarctica in January 1908, which meant leaving England during the 1907 summer. He therefore had six months to secure the financing, acquire and fit out a ship, buy all the equipment and supplies, and recruit the personnel. In April, believing that he had got the backing of Scottish businessman Donald Steuart, Shackleton travelled to Norway intending to buy a 700-ton polar vessel, Bjorn, that would have served ideally as an expedition ship. When Steuart withdrew his support, however, Bjorn was beyond Shackleton's means. Bjorn was eventually acquired by German explorer Wilhelm Filchner and, renamed Deutschland, was used in his 1911–1913 voyage to the Weddell Sea. Shackleton had to settle for the elderly, much smaller Nimrod, a forty-year-old wooden sealer of 334 gross register tons, which he was able to acquire for £5,000 (updated value £). Shackleton was shocked by his first sight of Nimrod after her arrival in London from Newfoundland in June 1907. "She was much dilapidated and smelt strongly of seal oil, and an inspection [...] showed that she needed caulking and that her masts would have to be renewed." However, in the hands of experienced ship-fitters she soon "assumed a more satisfactory appearance." Later, Shackleton reported, he became extremely proud of the sturdy little ship. ### Fundraising By early July 1907 Shackleton had secured little financial support beyond Beardmore's guarantee and was lacking the funds to complete the refit of Nimrod. In mid-July he approached the philanthropic Earl of Iveagh, otherwise known as Edward Guinness, head of the Anglo-Irish brewing family, who agreed to guarantee the sum of £2,000 (updated value £) provided that Shackleton found other backers to contribute a further £6,000. Shackleton was able to do this, the extra funds including £2,000 from Sir Philip Brocklehurst, who paid this sum to secure a place on the expedition. A last-minute gift of £4,000 from Shackleton's cousin William Bell still left the expedition far short of the required £30,000, but enabled Nimrod's refit to be finished. Fundraising continued in Australia after the ship arrived there; a further £5,000 was provided as a gift from the Australian government, and the New Zealand government gave £1,000. By these means, and with other smaller loans and donations, the £30,000 was raised, although by the end of the expedition total costs had risen, by Shackleton's estimate, to £45,000. Shackleton expected to make large sums from his book about the expedition and from lectures. He also hoped to profit from sales of special postage stamps bearing the cancellation stamp of the Antarctica post office that Shackleton, appointed temporary postmaster by the New Zealand government, intended to establish there. None of these schemes produced the anticipated riches, although the post office was set up at Cape Royds and used as a conduit for the expedition's mail. ### Personnel Shackleton hoped to recruit a strong contingent from the Discovery Expedition and offered his former comrade Edward Adrian Wilson the post of chief scientist and second-in-command. Wilson refused, citing his work with the Board of Agriculture's Committee on the Investigation of Grouse Disease. Further refusals followed from former Discovery colleagues Michael Barne, Reginald Skelton and finally George Mulock, who inadvertently revealed to Shackleton that the Discovery officers had all committed themselves to Scott and his as-yet unannounced expedition plans. The only Discovery hands to join Shackleton were the two petty officers, Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce. Apparently Shackleton spotted Joyce on the top deck of a bus as it passed the expedition's London offices, whereupon someone was sent to find him and bring him in. Shackleton's second-in-command—although this was not clarified until the expedition reached the Antarctic—was Jameson Boyd Adams, a Royal Naval Reserve lieutenant who had turned down the chance of a regular commission to join Shackleton. He would also act as the expedition's meteorologist. Nimrod's captain was another naval reserve officer, Rupert England; 23-year-old John King Davis, who would later make his own reputation as an Antarctic captain, was appointed chief officer at the last moment. Aeneas Mackintosh, a merchant navy officer from the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), was originally second officer, but was later transferred to the shore party, being replaced as second officer by A. E. Harbord. Others in the shore party were the two surgeons, Alistair Mackay and Eric Marshall, Bernard Day the motor expert, and Sir Philip Brocklehurst, the subscribing member who had been taken on as assistant geologist. The small scientific team that departed from England included 41-year-old biologist James Murray and 21-year-old geologist Raymond Priestley, a future founder of the Scott Polar Research Institute. Two important additions to the team were made in Australia. The first of these was Edgeworth David, a professor of geology at the University of Sydney, who became the party's chief scientific officer. The second was a former pupil of David's, Douglas Mawson, a lecturer in mineralogy at the University of Adelaide. Both had originally intended to sail to Antarctica and then immediately back with Nimrod but were persuaded to become full members of the expedition. David was instrumental in securing the Australian government's £5,000 grant. Before departure for the Antarctic in August 1907, Joyce and Wild took a crash course in printing methods, as it was Shackleton's intention to publish a book or magazine while in the Antarctic. ## Promise to Scott Shackleton's February 1907 announcement that he intended to base his expedition at the old Discovery headquarters was noted by Scott, whose own future Antarctic plans were at that stage unannounced. In a letter to Shackleton, Scott claimed priority rights to McMurdo Sound. "I feel I have a sort of right to my own field of work," he wrote, adding: "anyone who has had to do with exploration will regard this region primarily as mine". He concluded by reminding Shackleton of his duty of loyalty towards his former commander. Shackleton's initial reply was accommodating: "I would like to fall in with your views as far as possible without creating a position that would be untenable to myself". Wilson, asked by Shackleton to mediate, took an even tougher line than Scott. "I think you should retire from McMurdo Sound", he wrote, advising Shackleton not to make any plans to work from anywhere in the entire Ross Sea quarter until Scott decided "what limits he puts on his own rights". To this Shackleton replied: "There is no doubt in my mind that his rights end at the base he asked for [...] I consider I have reached my limit and I go no further". The matter was unresolved when Scott returned from sea duty in May 1907. Scott pressed for a line of demarcation at 170° W—everything to the west of that line, including McMurdo Sound, Ross Island, and Victoria Land, would be Scott's preserve. Shackleton, with other concerns pressing on him, felt obliged to concede. On 17 May he signed a declaration stating that, "I am leaving the McMurdo base to you", and that he would seek to land further east, either at the Barrier Inlet visited briefly during the Discovery Expedition, or at King Edward VII Land. He would not touch the coast of Victoria Land at all. It was a capitulation to Scott and Wilson, and meant forfeiting the expedition's aim of reaching the South Magnetic Pole which was located within Victoria Land. Polar historian Beau Riffenburgh believes this was "a promise that should never ethically have been demanded and one that should never have been given, impacting as it might on the entire safety of Shackleton's expedition". The dispute soured relations between the two men (who nevertheless maintained public civilities) and would eventually lead to the complete rupture of Shackleton's formerly close friendship with Wilson. In his own account of the expedition, Shackleton makes no reference to the wrangle with Scott. He merely states that "before we finally left England I had decided that if possible I would establish my base in King Edward VII Land instead of [...] McMurdo Sound". ## Expedition ### Voyage south After inspection by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, Nimrod sailed on 11 August 1907. Shackleton remained behind on expedition business; he and other expedition members followed on a faster ship. The entire complement came together in New Zealand, ready for the ship's departure to Antarctica on New Year's Day, 1908. As a means of conserving fuel, Shackleton had arranged with the New Zealand government for Nimrod to be towed to the Antarctic circle, a distance of approximately 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 km; 1,600 mi), the costs of the tow being met partly by the government and partly by the Union Steam Ship Company as a contribution to the expedition. On 14 January, in sight of the first icebergs, the towline was cut; Nimrod, under her own power, proceeded southward into the floating pack ice, heading for the Barrier Inlet where six years earlier Discovery had paused to allow Scott and Shackleton to take experimental balloon flights. The Barrier (later known as the Ross Ice Shelf) was sighted on 23 January, but the inlet had disappeared; the Barrier edge had changed significantly in the intervening years, and the section which had included the inlet had broken away to form a considerable bay, which Shackleton named the Bay of Whales after the large number of whales seen there. Shackleton was not prepared to risk wintering on a Barrier surface that might calve into the sea, so he turned the ship towards King Edward VII Land. After repeated efforts to approach this coast had failed, and with rapidly moving ice threatening to trap the ship, Nimrod was forced to retreat. Shackleton's only choice now, other than abandonment of the expedition's goals, was to break the promise he had given to Scott. On 25 January he ordered the ship to head for McMurdo Sound. ### Cape Royds #### Establishing the base On arriving in McMurdo Sound on 29 January 1908, Nimrod's progress southward to the Discovery base at Hut Point was blocked by frozen sea. Shackleton decided to wait a few days in the hope that the ice would break up. During this delay, second officer Aeneas Mackintosh suffered an accident that led to the loss of his right eye. After emergency surgery by Marshall and Mackay, he was forced to relinquish his shore party place and go back to New Zealand with Nimrod. He recovered sufficiently to return with the ship in the following season. On 3 February Shackleton decided not to wait for the ice to shift but to make his headquarters at the nearest practicable landing place, Cape Royds. Late that evening the ship was moored, and a suitable site for the expedition's prefabricated hut was selected. The site was separated from Hut Point by 20 nautical miles (37 km; 23 mi) of sea, with no landward route to the south. Shackleton believed the party was "fortunate to get winter quarters as near as this to our starting point for the south." The following days were occupied with the landing of stores and equipment. This work was hampered by poor weather and by the caution of Captain England, who frequently took the ship out into the bay until ice conditions at the landing ground were in his view safer. The next fortnight followed this pattern, leading to sharp dissent between Shackleton and the captain. At one point, Shackleton asked England to stand down on the grounds that he was ill, but England refused. The task of unloading became, in Riffenburgh's description, "mind-numbingly difficult" but was finally completed on 22 February. Nimrod at last sailed away north, England unaware that ship's engineer Harry Dunlop was carrying a letter from Shackleton to the expedition's New Zealand agent, requesting a replacement captain for the return voyage next year. This knowledge was an open secret among the shore party; Marshall recorded in his diary that he was "glad to see the last of [England] ... whole thing damned disgrace to name of country!" #### Ascent of Mount Erebus After Nimrod's departure, the sea ice broke up, cutting off the party's route to the Barrier and thus making preparatory sledging and depot-laying impossible. Shackleton decided to give the expedition impetus by ordering an immediate attempt to ascend Mount Erebus. This mountain, 12,450 feet (3,790 m) high, had never been climbed. A party from Discovery (which had included Wild and Joyce) had explored the foothills in 1904 but had not ascended higher than 3,000 feet (910 m). Neither Wild nor Joyce was in the Nimrod Expedition's main Erebus party, which consisted of David, Mawson and Mackay. With Marshall, Adams and Brocklehurst forming a support group, the ascent began on 5 March. On 7 March the two groups combined at around 5,500 feet (1,700 m) and all advanced towards the summit. On the following day a blizzard held them up, but early on 9 March the climb resumed; later that day the summit of the lower, main crater, was achieved. By this time Brocklehurst's feet were too frostbitten for him to continue, so he was left in camp while the others advanced to the active crater, which they reached after four hours. Several meteorological experiments were carried out and many rock samples were taken. Thereafter a rapid descent was made, mainly by sliding down successive snow-slopes. The party reached the Cape Royds hut "nearly dead", according to Eric Marshall, on 11 March. #### Winter 1908 The expedition's hut, a prefabricated structure measuring 33 x 19 feet (10m x 5.8m), was ready for occupation by the end of February. It was divided into a series of mainly two-person cubicles, with a kitchen area, a darkroom, storage and laboratory space. The ponies were housed in stalls built on the most sheltered side of the hut, while the dog kennels were placed close to the porch. Shackleton's inclusive leadership style, in contrast to that of Scott, meant no demarcation between upper and lower decks—all lived, worked and ate together. Morale was high; as Brocklehurst recorded, Shackleton "had a faculty for treating each member of the expedition as though he were valuable to it". In the ensuing months of winter darkness Joyce and Wild printed around 30 copies of the expedition's book, Aurora Australis, which were sewn and bound using packaging materials. The most important winter's work, however, was preparing for the following season's major journeys, which were to include attempts on both the South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole. By making his base in McMurdo Sound, Shackleton had been able to reinstate the Magnetic Pole as an expedition objective. Shackleton himself would be leading the South Pole journey, which had suffered a serious setback during the winter when four of the remaining ponies died, mainly from eating volcanic sand for its salt content. ### Southern journey #### Outward march Shackleton's choice of a four-man team for the southern journey to the South Pole was largely determined by the number of surviving ponies. Influenced by his experiences on the Discovery Expedition, he had put his confidence in ponies rather than dogs for the long polar march. The motor car, which ran well on flat ice, could not cope with Barrier surfaces and was not considered for the polar journey. The men chosen by Shackleton to accompany him were Marshall, Adams and Wild. Joyce, whose Antarctic experience exceeded all save Wild's, was excluded from the party after Marshall's medical examination raised doubts about his fitness. The march began on 29 October 1908. Shackleton had calculated the return distance to the Pole as 1,494 nautical miles (2,767 km; 1,719 mi). His initial plan allowed 91 days for the return journey, requiring a daily average distance of about 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi). After a slow start due to a combination of poor weather and lameness in the horses, Shackleton reduced the daily food allowance to extend the total available journey time to 110 days. This required a shorter daily average of around 131⁄2 nautical miles. Between 9 and 21 November they made good progress, but the ponies suffered on the difficult Barrier surface, and the first of the four had to be shot when the party reached 81° S. On 26 November a new farthest south record was established as they passed the 82° 17' mark set by Scott's southern march in December 1902. Shackleton's party covered the distance in 29 days compared with Scott's 59, using a track considerably east of Scott's to avoid the surface problems the earlier journey had encountered. As the group moved into unknown territory, the Barrier surface became increasingly disturbed and broken; two more ponies succumbed to the strain. The mountains to the west curved round to block their path southward, and the party's attention was caught by a "brilliant gleam of light" in the sky ahead. The reason for this phenomenon became clear on 3 December when, after a climb through the foothills of the mountain chain, they saw before them what Shackleton later described as "an open road to the south, [...] a great glacier, running almost south to north between two huge mountain ranges". Shackleton christened this glacier the "Beardmore" after the expedition's biggest sponsor. Travel on the glacier surface proved to be a trial, especially for Socks, the remaining pony, who had great difficulty in finding secure footings. On 7 December, Socks disappeared down a deep crevasse, very nearly taking Wild with him. However, the pony's harness broke, and the sledge containing their supplies remained on the surface. For the rest of the southward journey and the whole of the return trip they had to rely on man-hauling. As the journey continued, personal antagonisms emerged. Wild privately expressed the wish that Marshall would "fall down a crevasse about a thousand feet deep". Marshall wrote that following Shackleton to the Pole was "like following an old woman. Always panicking". However, Christmas Day was celebrated with crème de menthe and cigars. Their position was 85° 51' S, still 249 nautical miles (461 km; 287 mi) from the Pole, and they were now carrying barely a month's supply of food, having stored the rest in depots for their return journey. They could not cover the remaining distance to the Pole and back with this amount of food. However, Shackleton was not yet prepared to admit that the Pole was beyond them and decided to go forward after cutting food rations further, and dumping all but the most essential equipment. On Boxing Day the glacier ascent was at last completed, and the march on the polar plateau began. Conditions did not ease; Shackleton recorded 31 December as the "hardest day we have had". On the next day he noted that, having attained 87° 61⁄2′ S, they had beaten North and South polar records. That day, referring to Marshall and Adams, Wild wrote: "if we only had Joyce and Marston here instead of those two grubscoffing useless beggars we would have done it [the Pole] easily." On 4 January 1909, Shackleton finally accepted that the Pole was beyond them and revised his goal to the symbolic achievement of getting within 100 geographical miles of the Pole. The party struggled on, at the borders of survival, until on 9 January 1909, after a last dash forward without the sledge or other equipment, the march ended. "We have shot our bolt", wrote Shackleton, "and the tale is 88° 23' S". They were 97.5 geographical miles from the South Pole. The Union Jack was duly planted, and Shackleton named the polar plateau after King Edward VII. #### Return journey Shackleton's party turned for home after 73 days' southward travel. Rations had been cut several times to extend the return journey time beyond the original 110-day estimate. Shackleton now aimed to reach Hut Point in 50 days, since according to Shackleton's prior orders Nimrod, having returned to take the expedition home, would depart on 1 March at the latest. The four men were now much weakened, yet in the following days they achieved impressive distances, reaching the head of the glacier on 19 January. As they began the descent they had five days' food at half rations, to last them until the Lower Glacier depot; during the ascent the same distance had taken 12 days. Shackleton's physical condition was by now a major concern, yet according to Adams "the worse he felt, the harder he pulled". The depot was reached on 28 January. Wild, ill with dysentery, was unable to pull or to eat anything but biscuits, which were in short supply. On 31 January Shackleton forced his own breakfast biscuit on Wild, a gesture that moved Wild to write: "BY GOD I shall never forget. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit". A few days later, the rest of the party were struck with severe enteritis, the result of eating tainted pony-meat. But the pace of march had to be maintained; the small amounts of food carried between depots would make any delay fatal. However, a strong wind behind them enabled them to set a sail on the sledge and maintain a good marching rate. "We are so thin that our bones ache as we lie on the hard snow", wrote Shackleton. From 18 February onward they began to pick up familiar landmarks, and on the 23rd they reached Bluff Depot, which to their great relief had been copiously resupplied by Joyce. The range of delicacies over and above the crates of regular supplies was listed by Shackleton: "Carlsbad plums, eggs, cakes, plum pudding, gingerbread and crystallised fruit". Wild's laconic comment was, "Good old Joyce". Their food worries were now resolved, but they still had to get back to Hut Point before the 1 March deadline. The final leg of their march was interrupted by a blizzard, which held them in camp for 24 hours. On 27 February, when they were still 33 nautical miles (61 km; 38 mi) from safety, Marshall collapsed. Shackleton then decided that he and Wild would make a dash for Hut Point in hopes of finding Nimrod and holding her until the other two could be rescued. They reached the hut late on 28 February. Hoping that the ship was nearby, they sought to attract its attention by setting fire to a small wooden hut used for magnetic observations. Shortly afterwards the ship, which had been anchored at the Glacier Tongue, came into view: "No happier sight ever met the eyes of man", wrote Wild later. It was a further three days before Adams and Marshall could be picked up from the Barrier, but by 4 March the whole southern party was aboard and Shackleton was able to order full steam towards the north. ### Northern Party While preparing for his southern journey, Shackleton gave instructions to David to lead a northern party to Victoria Land to carry out magnetic and geological work. The party was to try to reach the Magnetic Pole, and was to carry out a full geological survey in the Dry Valley area. David's party consisted of himself, Mawson and Mackay. It would be a man-hauling party; the dogs remained at base to be used for depot-laying and other routine work. The party had orders to plant the Union Jack at the Magnetic Pole and to take possession of Victoria Land for the British Empire. After several days' preparatory work, they started out on 5 October 1908, drawn for the first few miles by the motor car. Due to sea ice conditions and adverse weather, progress was initially very slow. By the end of October they had crossed McMurdo Sound and advanced 60 miles (100 km) up the difficult Victoria Land coast, at which point they decided to concentrate all their efforts on reaching the Magnetic Pole. After traversing the Nordenskjold Ice Tongue and the treacherous Drygalski Ice Tongue they were finally able to leave the coast and turn north-west, towards the Magnetic Pole's approximate location. Before then, David had a narrow escape after falling into a crevasse but was rescued by Mawson. Their way up to the inland plateau was via a labyrinthine glacier (later named the Reeves Glacier after the RGS's main map curator), which brought them on 27 December to a hard snow surface. This enabled them to move more swiftly, at a rate of about 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) daily, taking regular magnetic observations. On 16 January, these observations showed them to be about 13 nautical miles (24 km; 15 mi) from the Magnetic Pole. The next day, 17 January 1909, they reached their goal, fixing the pole's position as 72° 15' S, 155° 16' E, at an elevation of 7,260 feet (2,210 m). In a muted ceremony, David took formal possession of the area for the British Empire. Exhausted, and short of food, the party faced a return journey of 250 nautical miles (460 km; 290 mi), with just 15 days to complete it if they were to make their prearranged coastal rendezvous with Nimrod. Despite increasing physical weakness they maintained their daily distances, and on 31 January were 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi) from their agreed pick-up point. Bad weather delayed them, and the rendezvous was not reached until 2 February. That night, in heavy drifting snow, Nimrod passed by them, unable to make out their camp. Two days later, however, after Nimrod had turned south again, the group was spotted from the ship and was able to scramble to safety, although in the rush to get aboard Mawson fell 18 feet (5.5 m) down a crevasse. The party had been travelling for four months and were wearing the same clothes in which they had departed Cape Royds; reportedly "the aroma was overpowering". Before this rescue, Nimrod had picked up a geological party consisting of Priestley, Brocklehurst and , who had been carrying out geological work in the Ferrar Glacier region. ## Aftermath On 23 March 1909, Shackleton landed in New Zealand and cabled a 2,500-word report to the London Daily Mail, with which he had an exclusive contract. Amid the acclamation and unstinting praise that Shackleton received from the exploring community, including Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen, the response of the RGS was more guarded. Its former president, Sir Clements Markham, privately expressed his disbelief of Shackleton's claimed latitude. However, on 14 June, Shackleton was met at London's Charing Cross Station by a very large crowd, which included RGS president Leonard Darwin and a rather reluctant Captain Scott. As to the latitude claimed, the reason for doubting its accuracy was that after 3 January all positions had been computed by dead reckoning: on direction, speed and elapsed time. The last proper observation, on 3 January, had calculated the latitude as 87° 22'. Shackleton's table of distances show that over the next three days they covered just over 40 nautical miles (74 km; 46 mi), to reach an estimated 88° 7' on 6 January. They were then held up for two days by a blizzard. On 9 January 1909, the table shows that the party travelled a further 16 nautical miles (30 km; 18 mi) to reach their farthest south, and the same distance back to camp. This distance in a single day far exceeded those for any other stage of the journey. Shackleton explained that this was a dash, "half running, half walking", unencumbered by the sledge or other equipment. Each of the four men independently confirmed his belief in the latitude achieved, and none gave any subsequent cause for his word to be doubted. Shackleton was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) by King Edward VII, who later conferred a knighthood on him. The RGS presented him with a gold medal, although apparently with reservations—"We do not propose to make the Medal so large as that which was awarded to Captain Scott", recorded an official. Although in the eyes of the public he was a hero, the riches that Shackleton had anticipated failed to materialise. The soaring costs of the expedition and the need to meet loan guarantees meant that he was saved from financial embarrassment only by a belated government grant of £20,000. The farthest south record of the Nimrod Expedition stood for less than three years, until Amundsen reached the South Pole on 15 December 1911. For his trail-breaking achievements, Shackleton received a fulsome tribute from Amundsen: "What Nansen is to the North, Shackleton is to the South". Thereafter, Shackleton's Antarctic ambitions were fixed on a transcontinental crossing, which he attempted unsuccessfully with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–17, although his status as a leading figure in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was by then assured. Other members of the Nimrod Expedition also achieved fame and standing in future years. David, Adams, Mawson and Priestley all eventually received knighthoods, the latter two continuing their polar work on further expeditions, though neither went south again with Shackleton. Mawson led the 1911–13 Australian Antarctic Expedition, and Priestley was part of the Terra Nova Expedition's scientific team. Wild was second-in-command to the "Boss" on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and on the short Quest Expedition, where he took over command after Shackleton's death at South Georgia Island in 1922. Ten years after her return from the Antarctic, Nimrod was battered to pieces in the North Sea after running aground on the Barber Sands off the Norfolk coast on 31 January 1919. Only two of her 12-person crew survived. Several mostly intact cases of whisky and brandy left behind at Cape Royds in 1909 were recovered in 2010, for analysis by a distilling company. A revival of the vintage (and since lost) formula for the particular brands found has been offered for sale with a portion of the proceeds to benefit the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, which discovered the lost spirits. There was also a monkey named Bouncy onboard the expedition which nobody knew about until 2014, when a recount of crew members onboard was discovered. ## See also - Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration - List of Antarctic expeditions

Abuwtiyuw

An Egyptian dog, one of the earliest documented domestic animals

The Egyptian dog Abuwtiyuw, also transcribed as Abutiu (died before 2280 BC), was one of the earliest documented domestic animals whose name is known. He is believed to have been a royal guard dog who lived in the Sixth Dynasty (2345–2181 BC), and received an elaborate ceremonial burial in the Giza Necropolis at the behest of a pharaoh whose name is unknown. An inscribed stone listing the gifts donated by the pharaoh for Abuwtiyuw's funeral was discovered by Egyptologist George A. Reisner in October 1935. It was apparently part of the spoil material incorporated into the structure of a Sixth Dynasty mastaba (pharaonic-era tomb) after the demolition of the funerary chapel belonging to Abuwtiyuw's owner, where the stone likely had originally been installed. The white limestone tablet measures 54.2 × 28.2 × 23.2 cm (21.3 × 11.1 × 9.1 in). The inscription is composed of ten vertical rows of hieroglyphs, separated by vertical lines. Abuwtiyuw appears to have been a sighthound, a lightly built hunting dog similar to a greyhound, with erect ears and a curly tail. The tomb in which his tablet was discovered is in Cemetery G 2100 in Giza West Field, close to the western side of the Great Pyramid of Giza (Pyramid of Khufu/Kheops). ## Background Herodotus documents that in ancient Persia dogs were protected animals, held in the highest esteem during their lifetime. According to the ancient Greeks, dogs in ancient Egypt were treated with the same respect as they were in Persia, and were commonly mummified after death before being buried in family tombs. The ancient Egyptians and others of the Near East believed that dogs were spiritual beings, similar to humans, and they were "often associated with particular deities and the powers they wield". A number of the early dynastic royal burial grounds contain the graves of dogs, along with women and servants of the royal household. Ashkelon cemetery in the Southern District of Israel is perhaps the best-documented dog cemetery in the ancient world, but dog mummies have been unearthed en masse in sites across Egypt including Rhoda in Upper Egypt, Thebes, Abydos, and near Maghagha. The ancient Egyptians mummified many animal species, from cats and gazelles to crocodiles, baboons, and birds. Typically, many animal species were consumed as meat after death, but it is highly unlikely that dogs would have been eaten. Radiographs of exhumed dogs in the ancient world have revealed that the mummification process involved wrapping the embalmed bones together with bandages and placing them within a wooden statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed deity associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion. ## Discovery The only source from which Abuwtiyuw is known is a stone inscription tablet that may have come from the funerary chapel of the dog's owner. The tablet was apparently among spolia used to build another grave in approximately 2280 BC, a sixth-Dynasty mastaba, after the chapel's demolition. It was discovered on 13 October 1935 by Egyptologist George A. Reisner during a joint Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts expedition, and removed from the site four days later. The find was recorded by the main expedition photographer, Mohammedani Ibrahim, who took more than 9,321 large-format glass-plate images on Reisner's expeditions. The tablet is now held by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (inventory number JE 67573). Neither the dog's grave nor mummy have been recovered. The tomb in which the tablet was unearthed is in Cemetery G 2100 in Giza West Field, close to the western side of the Great Pyramid of Giza (Pyramid of Khufu/Kheops). The white limestone tablet measures 54.2 × 28.2 × 23.2 cm (21.3 × 11.1 × 9.1 in) and is inscribed with ten vertical rows of hieroglyphs, separated from each other by vertical lines. Part of a leash is visible on the upper-right corner, suggesting that the tablet displayed an image of Abuwtiyuw with his owner. Abuwtiyuw appears to have been a sighthound, a lightly built hunting dog similar to a greyhound, with erect ears and a curly tail. The text of the inscription translated by Reisner describes the gifts offered by the pharaoh in tribute at Abuwtiyuw's funeral: > "The dog which was the guard of His Majesty, Abuwtiyuw is his name. His Majesty ordered that he be buried (ceremonially), that he be given a coffin from the royal treasury, fine linen in great quantity, (and) incense. His Majesty (also) gave perfumed ointment, and (ordered) that a tomb be built for him by the gangs of masons. His Majesty did this for him in order that he (the dog) might be Honoured (before the great god, Anubis)." ## Interpretation Although it was common to bury dogs in ancient Egypt, the funeral of Abuwtiyuw was unusually elaborate, an honour normally reserved for upper-class humans. The pharaoh's gifts suggest that the corpse was mummified, as was commonly done with humans at the time, in the belief that the Ka (Egyptian soul) of the dead would enter into its afterlife through the ceremonial burial. Although no images of Abuwtiyuw have been found, the text characterizes him as ṯzm (Tesem), a lightly built hunting dog similar to a greyhound, with erect ears and a curly tail. The Tesem dog features in predynastic depictions, making it one of the oldest known breeds of dog, and images of it are common throughout Ancient Egyptian history. According to Reisner, the name Abuwtiyuw is not fully translatable, but he surmised that ꜥbw ("abuw") is an onomatopoeic representation of a dog's bark, as this component often is found in Ancient Egyptian dog names. Edward C. Martin Jr. claims that the name means 'With Pointed Ears', which would fit the description of the Tesem. ## See also - Africanis - List of individual dogs

Wood stork

Wading bird found in the Americas

The wood stork (Mycteria americana) is a large American wading bird in the family Ciconiidae (storks), the only member of the family to breed in North America. It was formerly called the "wood ibis", though it is not an ibis. It is found in subtropical and tropical habitats in the Americas, including the Caribbean. In South America, it is resident, but in North America, it may disperse as far as Florida. Originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, this stork likely evolved in tropical regions. The head and neck are bare of feathers, and dark grey in colour. The plumage is mostly white, with the exception of the tail and some of the wing feathers, which are black with a greenish-purplish sheen. The juvenile differs from the adult, with the former having a feathered head and a yellow bill, compared to the black adult bill. There is little sexual dimorphism. The wood stork's habitat can vary, but it must have a tropical or subtropical climate with fluctuating water levels. The one-metre-diameter (3.3-foot) nest is found in trees, especially mangroves and those of the genus Taxodium, usually surrounded by water or over water. The wood stork nests colonially. The nest itself is made from sticks and greenery. During the breeding season, which is initiated when the water levels decline and can occur anytime between November and August, a single clutch of three to five eggs is laid. These are incubated for around 30 days, and the chicks hatch underdeveloped, or altricial, requiring support from their parents. They fledge 60 to 65 days after hatching, although only about 31% of nests fledge a chick in any given year, with most chicks dying during their first two weeks, despite being watched by an adult during that time. The chicks are fed fish of increasing size. The diet of the adult changes throughout the year. During the dry season, fish and insects are eaten, compared to the addition of frogs and crabs during the wet season. Because it forages by touch, it needs shallow water to effectively catch food. This is also the reason why the wood stork breeds when water levels start to fall. Globally, the wood stork is considered to be of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This is due to its large range. In the United States, on the other hand, it is considered to be threatened. Predators of the wood stork include raccoons (which predate on chicks), crested caracaras, which prey on eggs, and other birds of prey, which feed on eggs and chicks. Hunting and egg-collecting by humans has been implicated as a factor in the decline of South American wood storks. Humans also cause nest failures through ecotourism, although observation through binoculars about 75 metres (246 ft) away does not have a large effect on nesting success. Habitat alteration has caused the wood stork to decline, with levee and drainage systems in the Everglades causing a shift in the timing of breeding and thus a decrease in breeding success. ## Taxonomy and etymology The wood stork was first formally given its binomial name Mycteria americana by Linnaeus in 1758. Linnaeus based his name on a misplaced account and illustration in Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648) of the jabiru-guacu. Linnaeus also described Tantalus loculator, which was proven to also apply to the jabiru-guacu, after M. americana based on a 1731 illustration of the wood stork by Mark Catesby under the name of wood pelican. Since these binomials referred to the same species, M. americana and T. loculator are synonymous but M. americana takes priority as it occurs before T. loculator. The accepted genus name Mycteria derives from the Greek μυκτήρ : myktēr, meaning snout or trunk, and the species name americana references the distribution of this stork. This species seems to have evolved in tropical regions; its North American presence probably postdates the last ice age. A fossil fragment from the Touro Passo Formation found at Arroio Touro Passo (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) might be of the living species; it is at most from the Late Pleistocene age, a few 10,000s of years ago. North American fossils from that time are of an extinct larger relative, M. wetmorei, which would be distinguished from the wood on the basis of size and on the basis of M. wetmorei's less curved mandible. This was probably a sister species; both occurred sympatrically on Cuba at the end of the Pleistocene. Of the extant members of the genus Mycteria, this bird is basal to the clade yellow-billed stork, which is itself basal to the milky stork and the painted stork. This phylogeny is based on a 1996 study that sequenced the B chromosome and then utilized DNA–DNA hybridization to find the relations between the storks. Likely because of its decurved bill, the wood stork has formerly been called the "wood ibis", although it is not an ibis. It also has been given the name of the "American wood stork", because it is found in the Americas. Regional names include "flinthead", "stonehead", "ironhead", "gourdhead", and "preacher". ## Description The adult wood stork is a large bird which stands 83 to 115 cm (33–45 in) tall with a wingspan of 140 to 180 cm (55–71 in). The male typically weighs 2.5 to 3.3 kg (5.5–7.3 lb), with a mean weight of 2.7 kg (6.0 lb); the female weighs 2.0 to 2.8 kg (4.4–6.2 lb), with a mean weight of 2.42 kg (5.3 lb). Another estimate puts the mean weight at 2.64 kg (5.8 lb). The head and neck of the adult are bare, and the scaly skin is a dark grey. The black downward-curved bill is long and very wide at the base. The plumage is mostly white, with the , , and tail being black and having a greenish and purplish iridescence. The legs and feet are dark, and the flesh-coloured toes are pink during the breeding season. The sexes are similar. Newly hatched chicks have a sparse coat of grey down () that is replaced by a dense, wooly, and white down () in about 10 days. Chicks grow fast, being about half the height of adults in three to four weeks. By the sixth and seventh weeks, the plumage on the head and neck turns smokey grey. When fledged, they resemble the adult, differing only in that they have a feathered head and a yellow bill. ## Distribution and habitat This is a subtropical and tropical species which breeds in much of South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The wood stork is the only stork that breeds in North America. In the United States there are small breeding populations in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. In South America, it is found south to northern Argentina. Some populations in North America disperse after breeding, frequently to South America. This stork is able to adapt to a variety of tropical and subtropical wetland habitats having fluctuating water levels (as that initiates breeding). It nests in trees that are over water or surrounded by water. In freshwater habitats, it primarily nests in forests dominated by trees of the genus Taxodium (in the USA), while in estuaries, it generally nests on trees in the mangrove forests. To feed, the wood stork uses freshwater marshes in habitats with an abundance of Taxodium trees, while in areas with mangrove forests, it uses brackish water. Areas with more lakes attract feeding on lake, stream, and river edges. ## Behaviour ### Breeding A resident breeder in lowland wetlands with trees, the wood stork builds a large stick nest in a tree. In freshwater habitats, it prefers to nest in trees that are larger in diameter. It nests colonially, with up to 25 nests in one tree. The height of these nests is variable, with some nests located in shorter mangrove trees being at heights of about 2.5 metres (8.2 ft), compared to a height of about 6.5 metres (21 ft) for taller mangrove trees. For Taxodium trees, it generally nests near the top branches, frequently between 18 and 24 metres (59 and 79 ft) above the ground. On the tree itself, forks of large limbs or places where multiple branches cross are usually chosen. The nest itself is built by the male from sticks and green twigs collected from the colony and the surrounding area. The greenery usually starts to be added before the eggs are laid but after the main structure of twigs is completed. The frequency at which it is added decreases after the eggs hatch. This greenery functions to help insulate the nest. When complete, the nest is about one metre (3.3 ft) in diameter, with a central green area having an average diameter of about 28 centimetres (11 in). The thickness of the edge of the nest usually measures from 12 to 20 centimetres (4.7 to 7.9 in). Wood storks without a nest occasionally try to take over others' nests. Such nest take-overs are performed by more than one bird. The young and eggs are thrown out of the nest within about 15 minutes. If only one stork is attending the nest when it is forced out, then it usually waits for its mate to try to take the nest back over. Breeding is initiated by a drop in the water level combined with an increased density of fish (with the former likely triggering the latter). This is because a decrease in the water level and an increased density of fish allows for an adequate amount of food for the nestlings. This can occur anytime between November and August. After it starts, breeding takes about four months to complete. This bird lays one clutch of three to five cream coloured eggs that are about 68 by 46 millimetres (2.7 by 1.8 in) in size. These eggs are usually laid one to two days apart and incubated for 27 to 32 days by both sexes. This incubation period starts when the first egg is laid. During the first week of incubation, the parents do not go far from the colony, with the exception of the short trips to forage, drink, and collect nesting material carried out by the non-incubating bird. After the first week, the non-incubating bird spends less time in the colony, although the eggs are never left unattended. After a few hours of incubation, this bird sometimes takes a break to stretch, preen itself, rearrange nest material, or turn the eggs. The eggs hatch in the order in which they were laid, with an interval of a few days between when each egg hatches. The chicks hatch altricial, unable to move, and weigh an average of 62 grams (2.2 oz). They are brooded for the first week after hatching, and after that when it is raining and at night. The chicks are not left alone until at least three weeks of age, with one parent foraging while the other guards the nest and chicks. When the chicks are at least three weeks old, they are large enough to stay and protect the nest. This coincides with the chicks getting more aggressive when presented with foreign objects or organisms. They fledge 60 to 65 days after hatching, and reach sexual maturity at four years of age, although they usually do not successfully fledge chicks until their fifth year of age. The hatching success, the percentage of birds that had at least one egg that hatched in a year, of the wood stork is around 62%. This can vary widely, though, with colonies ranging from about 26% to 89% hatching success. The period when chicks are most vulnerable to death is from hatching to when they are two weeks old. Overall, about 31% of nests produce at least one fledged bird. Raccoons and caracaras, especially crested caracaras, are prominent predators of eggs and chicks. Other causes of nesting failure is the falling of nests, thus breaking the eggs inside. This can be caused by many events, the most prominent being poor nest construction and fights between adults. ### Feeding During the dry season, the wood stork eats mostly fish, supplemented by insects. During the wet season, on the other hand, fish make up about half the diet, crabs make up about 30%, and insects and frogs make up the rest. The wood stork eats larger fish more often than smaller fish, even in some cases where the latter is more abundant. It is estimated that an adult wood stork needs about 520 grams (1.15 lb) per day to sustain itself. For a whole family, it is estimated that about 200 kilograms (440 lb) are needed per breeding season. The wood stork usually forages in flocks when not breeding, and alone and in small groups when it is breeding. In the dry season, the stork generally forages by slowly walking forward with its bill submerged in water while groping for food. During the wet season, this method is used about 40% of the time to catch food. During this period, foot stirring, where the stork walks very slowly with its bill in the water while pumping its foot up and down before every step, is used about 35% of the time. Both these hunting methods are non-visual. Because of its non-visual foraging methods, the wood stork requires shallow water and a high density of fish to forage successfully. The water that it forages in during the dry season averages about 17 centimetres (6.7 in) in depth, while during the wet season, the water usually is about 10 centimetres (3.9 in) deep. In the dry season, this stork prefers to forage in waters with no emergent vegetation, whereas in the wet season, it prefers areas with vegetation emerging between 10 and 20 centimetres (3.9 and 7.9 in) above the surface on average. This bird can travel over 80 kilometres (50 mi) to reach foraging sites, lending it access to a wide variety of habitats. Both parents feed the chicks by regurgitating food onto the nest floor. The chicks are mainly fed fish that are between 2 and 25 centimetres (0.79 and 9.84 in) in length, with the length of the fish, usually increasing as the chicks get older. The amount of food that the chicks get changes over time, with more being fed daily from hatching to about 22 days, when food intake levels off. This continues until about 45 days, when food consumption starts to decrease. Overall, a chick eats about 16.5 kilograms (36 lb) before it fledges. ### Flight When flying, this bird utilizes two different techniques. When it is not sufficiently warm and clear, such as in the late afternoon or on cloudy days, this stork alternates between flapping its wings and gliding for short periods of time. When it is warm and clear, this bird glides after it gains an altitude of at least 610 metres (2,000 ft) through continuously flapping its wings. It can then glide for distances ranging from 16 to 24 kilometres (9.9 to 14.9 mi). It does not have to flap its wings during this time because the warm thermals are strong enough to support its weight. Because of the energy that is conserved by soaring, this stork usually uses this method to fly to more distant areas. It flies with its neck outstretched and its legs and feet trailing behind it. When flying to foraging areas, the wood stork averages a speed of about 24.5 kilometres per hour (15.2 mph). In flapping flight it does 34.5 kilometres per hour (21.4 mph), and about 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) by gliding. ### Excretion and thermoregulation During the breeding season, the wood stork commonly defecates over the edge of its nest, while the chicks usually defecate inside. The method of defecation of the adult differs based on temperature. Normally, it excretes by leaning forward and slightly raising its tail, with the waste either going straight down or slightly backward. When it is hot, though, the adult takes a different position, quickly moving its tail downwards and forwards while twisting its body around to aim at a leg that is bent backward (this is called urohidrosis). Which leg is aimed at is alternated. The excrement aimed at the legs is fluid and watery. It generally hits the legs around the middle of the unfeathered tibia, and runs down the leg as it is being directed by the scales. This results in evaporation, making this a method of thermoregulation. The temperature at which this starts is slightly above the threshold for panting, the latter of which takes place at temperatures of about 41.7 °C (107.1 °F) and above, compared to the normal body temperature of about 40.7 °C (105.3 °F). In hot weather, breeding adults will also shade their chicks with their wings. ## Predators and parasites Raccoons are predators of wood stork chicks, especially during dry periods where the water beneath nesting trees dries up. Where it occurs, the crested caracara is a significant predator of eggs. Other caracaras, and hawks and vultures, also prey on both eggs and chicks. In the United States, Haemoproteus crumenium, a blood protozoan, can be found in subadult and adult wood storks. Other species of Haemoproteus also infect wood storks in Costa Rica, in addition to Syncuaria mycteriae, a nematode found in the gizzard of the wood stork. ## Status Globally, the wood stork is considered least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to its large range. In the United States, this bird is considered to be threatened. This is a recovery from its former status as endangered, which it held from 1984 to 2014 because of a decline in its population caused by habitat loss and drought. Similarly, in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, its decline seems to have been reversed: after an absence between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s, the species is now again regularly encountered there, in particular in the Tubarão River region. It is likely that the Paraná River region's wetlands served as a stronghold of the species, from where it is now re-colonizing some of its former haunts. ### Threats Disturbance by tourists can have an effect on nesting success, with a study finding that nests that had boats passing by them within about 20 metres (66 ft) had an average of 0.1 chicks fledging, compared to the normal rate for that area of about 0.9 chicks fledging per nest. Pedestrians watching from a distance of at least 75 metres (246 ft) did not significantly affect nesting success. In the Everglades, levee and drainage systems have caused the timing of water fluctuations to change, thus shifting the timing of nesting and consequently a decrease in population.

Tropical Storm Faxai (2007)

Pacific severe tropical storm in 2007

Severe Tropical Storm Faxai, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Juaning, was a short-lived tropical storm that had minor effects on land. The twentieth named storm of the 2007 Pacific typhoon season, Faxai originated from a tropical depression over the open waters of the western Pacific Ocean in late October. The storm quickly strengthened, becoming a severe tropical storm on October 26 as it rapidly traveled toward the northeast. The storm became extratropical the following day as it brushed Japan. The remnants dissipated on October 28. Although Faxai never made landfall, outer bands associated with the storm produced torrential rains, amounting to 458 mm (18.0 in) on Miyakejima. A Japan Airlines flight to Narita Airport encountered severe turbulence during the afternoon of October 27. One person sustained serious injuries, and five others received minor injuries; the plane was damaged during the event. One person was killed near Tokyo as the storm passed by, and three others were injured. Damages from the storm amounted to ¥150 million (US\$1.5 million). ## Meteorological history Tropical Storm Faxai began as an area of convection that persisted about 805 kilometers (500 mi) west of Guam on October 24. Satellite imagery indicated broad cyclonic turning in the lower levels of the atmosphere, and a trough was near the surface. Convection consolidated around the center of the low-level circulation, and the upper-level environment—low wind shear and good divergence—favored development. The following day, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) classified the system as a tropical depression. Shortly after, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued a Tropical Cyclone Formation Alert as convection deepened around a partially exposed low. The storm traveled northwest under the influences of a subtropical ridge to the north. At 0000 UTC on October 26, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) designated the system as a tropical depression and gave it the local name Juaning. Around the same time, the JMA upgraded the depression to a tropical storm and gave it the name Faxai. The JTWC issued advisories on Faxai, designating it as 20W; however, they classified it as a tropical depression. Several hours later, the storm began to undergo an extratropical transition, with convection persisting mainly in the northwestern portion of the storm and cold, dry air entering into the southwestern portion. At 1200 UTC, PAGASA issued their final advisory on Tropical Storm Juaning as it moved out of their area of responsibility. The JTWC reported that Tropical Depression 20W (Faxai) had become extratropical around this time as it merged with a baroclinic zone. A cold front developed along the southern portion of Faxai, a feature of extratropical cyclones. Around that time, the JMA upgraded Faxai to a severe tropical storm with (10-minute sustained) winds of 95 km/h (59 mph). The JTWC subsequently upgraded the depression to a tropical storm based on the development of a very impactful central dense overcast. A shortwave trough over the Korean peninsula provided a favorable upper-level environment for Faxai to intensify. Early the next day, Faxai began accelerating rapidly towards the northeast in the mid-latitude westerlies. An anticyclone over Japan created a strong pressure gradient between it and the tropical storm, causing the wind field of Faxai to expand significantly to the northeast. As the JTWC issued their final advisory, they assessed the storm to have reached its peak intensity, with (one-minute sustained) winds of 75 km/h (47 mph). The JMA also assessed Faxai to have reached its peak intensity at that time, with (10-minute sustained) winds of 100 km/h (62 mph) and a minimum pressure of 975 hPa (mbar); however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that Faxai had attained hurricane-force winds by this time, peaking at 130 km/h (81 mph). The storm continued towards the northeast at a rapid pace and became extratropical off the eastern coast of Honshu around 1200 UTC on October 27. The extratropical remnants persisted for more than a day before dissipating over open waters late on October 28. NOAA, on the other hand, continued to monitor the remnants of Faxai, with the system reaching the Aleutian Islands on October 29. The following day, the storm rapidly intensified, with the central pressure dropping to 957 hPa (mbar) by 1800 UTC. On October 31, the system tracked into Alaska and weakened. The Japan Meteorological Agency uses 10-minute sustained winds, while the Joint Typhoon Warning Center uses one-minute sustained winds. The conversion factor between the two is 1.14. JMA's peak intensity for Faxai was 100 km/h (65 mph) 10-minute sustained, or 120 km/h (75 mph) one-minute sustained. The JTWC's peak intensity for Faxai was 75 km/h (47 mph) one-minute sustained, or 65 km/h (40 mph) 10-minute sustained. ## Preparations and impact As Faxai approached Japan, All Nippon Airways canceled all of its day flights between Tokyo and the Izu Islands. Tokai Kisen, which operates ferries between Tokyo, the Izu Islands and Shizuoka Prefecture, canceled some services due to the storm. Areas around Tokyo were warned of the expected heavy rains, waves up to 6 m (20 ft), and high winds. Residents were advised to stay indoors during the storm, especially after sunset, and to avoid possible flying debris. Although Faxai did not make landfall, the outer bands produced heavy rains, which caused minor damage along the eastern coast of Japan. The highest total rainfall was recorded on Miyakejima at 458 mm (18.0 in) and in the Ōshima Subprefecture of Tokyo, 192 mm (7.6 in) was recorded. The rainfall in Miyakejima nearly surpassed the record daily rainfall for October 27. Rainfall rates peaked at 95 mm/h (3.7 in/h) on Miyaketsubota, which triggered seven mudslides throughout the country. One woman was killed near Tokyo, and three people were injured. One home, two hectares of farmland, 2 km (1.2 mi) of roads, and one ship were damaged by the storm. At the height of the storm, 9,605 residences were without power throughout Japan. Damages from cyclone totaled ¥150 million (US\$1.5 million). At 5:31 pm Japan Standard Time (0831 UTC) on October 27, a Japan Airlines Boeing 767-300 heading to Narita International Airport, encountered severe turbulence from Faxai about 74 km (46 mi) southeast of Narita. The turbulence caused seven injuries on the flight, as well as some damage to the plane. ## See also - Other tropical cyclones named Faxai - Other tropical cyclones named Juaning - Timeline of the 2007 Pacific typhoon season

Operation Hurricane

1952 British atomic bomb test

Operation Hurricane was the first test of a British atomic device. A plutonium implosion device was detonated on 3 October 1952 in Main Bay, Trimouille Island, in the Montebello Islands in Western Australia. With the success of Operation Hurricane, Britain became the third nuclear power, after the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Second World War, Britain commenced a nuclear weapons project, code-named Tube Alloys, but the 1943 Quebec Agreement merged it with the American Manhattan Project. Several key British scientists worked on the Manhattan Project, but after the war the American government ended cooperation on nuclear weapons. In January 1947, a cabinet sub-committee decided to resume British efforts to build nuclear weapons, in response to an apprehension of American isolationism and fears of Britain losing its great power status. The project was called High Explosive Research, and was directed by Lord Portal, with William Penney in charge of bomb design. Implicit in the decision to develop atomic bombs was the need to test them. The preferred site was the Pacific Proving Grounds in the US-controlled Marshall Islands. As a fallback, sites in Canada and Australia were considered. The Admiralty suggested that the Montebello Islands might be suitable, so the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, sent a request to the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies. The Australian government formally agreed to the islands being used as a nuclear test site in May 1951. In February 1952, Attlee's successor, Winston Churchill, announced in the House of Commons that the first British atomic bomb test would occur in Australia before the end of the year. A small fleet was assembled for Operation Hurricane under the command of Rear Admiral A. D. Torlesse; it included the escort carrier HMS Campania, which served as the flagship, and the LSTs Narvik, Zeebrugge and Tracker. Leonard Tyte from the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston was appointed the technical director. The bomb for Operation Hurricane was assembled (without its radioactive components) at Foulness and taken to the frigate HMS Plym for transport to Australia. On reaching the Montebello Islands, the five Royal Navy ships were joined by eleven Royal Australian Navy ships, including the aircraft carrier . To test the effects of a ship-smuggled atomic bomb on a port (a threat of great concern to the British at the time), the bomb was exploded inside the hull of Plym, anchored 350 metres (1,150 ft) off Trimouille Island. The explosion occurred 2.7 metres (8 ft 10 in) below the water line and left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 6 metres (20 ft) deep and 300 metres (980 ft) across. ## Background The December 1938 discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann—and its explanation and naming by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch—raised the possibility that an extremely powerful atomic bomb could be created. During the Second World War, Frisch and Rudolf Peierls at the University of Birmingham calculated the critical mass of a metallic sphere of pure uranium-235, and found that instead of tonnes, as everyone had assumed, as little as 1 to 10 kilograms (2 to 22 lb) would suffice, which would explode with the power of thousands of tonnes of dynamite. In response, Britain initiated an atomic bomb project, codenamed Tube Alloys. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Winston Churchill, and the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, signed the Quebec Agreement, which merged Tube Alloys with the American Manhattan Project to create a combined British, American and Canadian project. The British contribution to the Manhattan Project included assistance in the development of gaseous diffusion technology at the SAM Laboratories in New York, and the electromagnetic separation process at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. John Cockcroft became the director of the joint British-Canadian Montreal Laboratory. A British mission to the Los Alamos Laboratory led by James Chadwick, and later Peierls, included scientists such as Geoffrey Taylor, James Tuck, Niels Bohr, William Penney, Frisch, Ernest Titterton, and Klaus Fuchs, who was later revealed to be a spy for the Soviet Union. As overall head of the British Mission, Chadwick forged a close and successful partnership with Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, and ensured that British participation was complete and wholehearted. With the end of the war the Special Relationship between Britain and the United States "became very much less special". The British government had trusted that America would share nuclear technology, which the British saw as a joint discovery, but the terms of the Quebec Agreement remained secret. Senior members of the United States Congress were horrified when they discovered that it gave the British a veto over the use of nuclear weapons. On 9 November 1945, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Clement Attlee, and the Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, went to Washington, DC, to confer with Truman about future cooperation in nuclear weapons and nuclear power. They signed a Memorandum of Intention that replaced the Quebec Agreement. It made Canada a full partner, and reduced the obligation to obtain consent for the use of nuclear weapons to merely requiring consultation. The three leaders agreed that there would be full and effective cooperation on civil and military applications of atomic energy, but the British were soon disappointed; the Americans made it clear that cooperation was restricted to basic scientific research. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) ended technical cooperation. Its control of "restricted data" prevented the United States' allies from receiving any information. Attlee set up a cabinet sub-committee, the Gen 75 Committee (known informally as the "Atomic Bomb Committee"), on 10 August 1945 to examine the feasibility of a nuclear weapons program. In October 1945, it accepted a recommendation that responsibility be placed within the Ministry of Supply. The Tube Alloys Directorate was transferred from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to the Ministry of Supply on 1 November 1945. To coordinate the effort, Lord Portal, the wartime Chief of the Air Staff, was appointed Controller of Production, Atomic Energy (CPAE), with direct access to the Prime Minister. An Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was established at RAF Harwell, south of Oxford, under the directorship of Cockcroft. AERE moved to Aldermaston in 1952. Christopher Hinton agreed to oversee the design, construction and operation of the new atomic weapons facilities. These included a new uranium plant at Springfields in Lancashire, and nuclear reactors and plutonium processing facilities at Windscale in Cumbria. Hinton established his headquarters in a former Royal Ordnance Factory at Risley in Lancashire on 4 February 1946. In July 1946, the Chiefs of Staff Committee recommended that Britain acquire nuclear weapons. They estimated that 200 bombs would be required by 1957. Despite this, and the research and construction of production facilities that had already been approved, there was still no official decision to proceed with making atomic bombs. Portal submitted a proposal to do so at the 8 January 1947 meeting of the Gen 163 Committee, a subcommittee of the Gen 75 Committee, which agreed to proceed with the development of atomic bombs. It also endorsed his proposal to place Penney, now the Chief Superintendent Armament Research (CSAR) at Fort Halstead in Kent, in charge of the bomb development effort, which was codenamed High Explosive Research. Penney contended that "the discriminative test for a first-class power is whether it has made an atomic bomb and we have either got to pass the test or suffer a serious loss of prestige both inside this country and internationally." Although the British government had committed to the development of an independent nuclear deterrent, it still hoped for a restoration of the nuclear Special Relationship with the Americans. It was therefore important that nothing be done that would jeopardise this. ## Site selection Implicit in the decision to develop atomic bombs was the need to test them. Lacking open, thinly-populated areas, British officials considered locations overseas. The preferred site was the American Pacific Proving Grounds. A request to use it was sent to the American Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1949. In October 1950 the Americans turned down the request. As a fallback, sites in Canada and Australia were considered. Penney spoke to Omond Solandt, the chairman of the Canadian Defence Research Board, and they arranged for a joint feasibility study. The study noted several requirements for a test area: - an isolated area with no human habitation 160 kilometres (100 mi) downwind; - large enough to accommodate a dozen detonations over a period of several years; - with prevailing winds that would blow fallout out to sea but away from shipping lanes; - a temporary camp site at least 16 kilometres (10 mi) upwind of the detonation area; - a base camp site at least 40 kilometres (25 mi) upwind of the detonation area, with room for laboratories, workshops and signals equipment; - ready for use by mid-1952. The first test would probably be a ground burst, but consideration was also given to an explosion in a ship to measure the effect of a ship-borne atomic bomb on a major port. Such data would complement that obtained about an underwater explosion by the American Operation Crossroads nuclear test in 1946, and would therefore be of value to the Americans. Seven Canadian sites were assessed, the most promising being Churchill, Manitoba, but the waters were too shallow to allow ships to approach close to shore. In September 1950, the Admiralty suggested that the uninhabited Montebello Islands in Australia might be suitable, so Attlee obtained permission from the Prime Minister of Australia, Robert Menzies, to send a survey party to look at the islands, which are about 80 kilometres (50 mi) and 130 kilometres (81 mi) from Onslow. Major General James Cassels, the Chief Liaison Officer with the United Kingdom Services Liaison Staff (UKSLS) in Melbourne, was designated the principal British contact in Australia, and Menzies nominated Sir Frederick Shedden, the Secretary of the Department of Defence, as the person with whom Cassels should deal. At the time Britain was still Australia's largest trading partner; it would be overtaken by Japan and the United States by the 1960s. Britain and Australia had strong cultural ties, and Menzies was strongly pro-British. Most Australians were of British descent, and Britain was still the largest source of immigrants to Australia, largely because British ex-servicemen and their families qualified for free passage, and other British migrants received subsidised passage. Australian and British troops were fighting communist forces together in the Korean War and the Malayan Emergency. Australia still maintained close defence ties with Britain through the Australia New Zealand and Malaya (ANZAM) area, which was created in 1948. Australian war plans of this era continued to be closely integrated with those of Britain, and involved reinforcing the British forces in the Middle East and Far East. Australia was particularly interested in developing atomic energy as the country was then thought to have no oil and only limited supplies of coal. Plans for atomic power were considered along with hydroelectricity as part of the post-war Snowy Mountains Scheme. There was also interest in the production of uranium-235 and plutonium for nuclear weapons. The Australian government had hopes of collaboration with Britain on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, but the 1948 Modus Vivendi cut Australian scientists off from information they had formerly had access to. Unlike Canada, Australia was not a party to the Quebec Agreement or the Modus Vivendi. Britain would not share technical information with Australia for fear that it might jeopardise its far more important relationship with the United States, and the Americans were reluctant to share secret information with Australia after the Venona project revealed the extent of Soviet espionage activities in Australia. The creation of NATO in 1949 excluded Australia from the Western Alliance. The three-man survey party, headed by Air Vice Marshal E. D. Davis, arrived in Sydney on 1 November 1950, and embarked on , under the command of Commander A. H. Cooper, who carried out a detailed hydrographic survey of the islands. The charts at the Admiralty had been made by HMS Beagle in August 1840. Soundings were taken of the depths of coastal waters to measure the tides, and samples of the gravel and sand were taken to assess whether they could be used for making concrete. The work afloat and ashore was complemented by Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aerial photography of the islands. The British survey team returned to London on 29 November 1950. The islands were assessed as suitable for atomic testing, but, for climatic reasons, only in October. On 27 March 1951, Attlee sent Menzies a personal message saying that, while negotiations with the United States for use of the Nevada Test Site were ongoing, work would need to begin if the Montebello Islands were to be used in October 1952. Menzies replied that he could not authorise the test until after the Australian federal election, to be held on 28 April 1951, but was willing to allow work to continue. Menzies was re-elected, and the Australian government formally agreed in May 1951. On 28 May, Attlee sent a comprehensive list of assistance that it hoped that Australia would provide. A more detailed survey was requested, which was carried out by in July and August 1951. The British government emphasised the importance of security, so as not to imperil its negotiations with the United States. The Australian government gave all weapon design data a classification of "Top Secret", other aspects of the test being "Classified". Nuclear weapons design was already covered by a D notice in the United Kingdom. Australian D Notice No. 8 was issued to cover nuclear tests. Meanwhile, negotiations continued with the Americans. Oliver Franks, the British Ambassador to the United States, lodged a formal request on 2 August 1951 for use of the Nevada Test Site. This was looked upon favourably by the United States Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and the chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, but opposed by Robert A. Lovett, the American Deputy Secretary of Defense and Robert LeBaron, the Deputy Secretary of Defence for Atomic Energy Affairs. The British government had announced on 7 June 1951 that Donald Maclean, who had served as a British member of the Combined Policy Committee from January 1947 to August 1948, had been a Soviet spy. In view of security concerns, Lovett and LeBaron wanted the tests to be conducted by Americans, British participation being limited to Penney and a few selected British scientists. Truman endorsed this counterproposal on 24 September 1951. The Nevada Test Site would be cheaper than Montebello, although the cost would be paid in scarce dollars. Information gathered would have to be shared with the Americans, who would not share their own data. It would not be possible to test from a ship, and the political advantages in demonstrating that Britain could develop and test nuclear weapons without American assistance would be foregone. The Americans were under no obligation to make the test site available for subsequent tests. Also, as Lord Cherwell noted, an American test meant that "in the lamentable event of the bomb failing to detonate, we should look very foolish indeed." A final decision was deferred until after the UK's 1951 election. This resulted in a change of government, the Conservative Party returning to power and Churchill replacing Attlee as Prime Minister. On 27 December 1951, the High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Australia informed Menzies of the British government's decision to use Montebello. On 26 February 1952, Churchill announced in the House of Commons that the first British atomic bomb test would occur in Australia before the end of the year. When queried by a UK Labour Party backbencher, Emrys Hughes, about the impact on the local flora and fauna, Churchill joked that the survey team had only seen some birds and lizards. Among the AERE scientists was an amateur biologist, Frank Hill, who collected samples of the flora and fauna on the islands, teaming up with Commander G. Wedd, who collected marine specimens from the surrounding waters. In a paper published by the Linnean Society of London, Hill catalogued over 400 species of plants and animals. This included 20 new species of insects, six of plants, and a new species of legless lizard. ## Preparations To coordinate the test, codenamed "Operation Hurricane", the British government established a Hurricane Executive Committee chaired by the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Edward Evans-Lombe. It held its first meeting in May 1951. To deal with it, an Australian Hurricane Panel was created, chaired by the Australian Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Captain Alan McNicoll. Its other members were Colonel John Wilton from the Australian Army, Group Captain Alister Murdoch from the RAAF and Charles Spry from Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Cassels or his representative was invited to attend its meetings. A pressing question was that of observers. Churchill decided to exclude the media and members of the UK parliament. As Canada was a party to the 1948 Modus Vivendi, Canadian scientists and technicians would have access to all technical data, but Australians would not. Penney was anxious to secure the services of Titterton, who had recently emigrated to Australia, as he had worked on the American Trinity and Crossroads tests. Menzies asked the vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Sir Douglas Copland, to release Titterton to work on Operation Hurricane. Cockcroft also wanted assistance from Leslie Martin, the Department of Defence's Science Advisor, who was also a professor of physics at the University of Melbourne, to work in the health physics area. The two men knew each other from their time at Cambridge University before the war. After some argument, Martin was accepted as an official observer, as was W. A. S. Butement, the Chief Scientist at the Department of Supply. The only other official observer was Solandt from Canada. An advance party of No. 5 Airfield Construction Squadron from RAAF Base Williamtown, New South Wales, moved to Onslow in August 1951 with heavy construction equipment, taking the train to Geraldton and then the road to Onslow. This was then transported to the Montebello Islands. A prefabricated hut was taken across by Karangai, along with equipment for establishing a meteorological station. Other materiel was moved from Onslow to the islands in 45-cubic-metre (40 MTON) lots in an ALC-40 landing craft manned by the Australian Army and towed by Karangai. This included two 25-tonne (25-long-ton) bulldozers, a grader, tip trucks, portable generators, 1,800-litre (400 imp gal) water tanks and a mobile radio transceiver. The hut was erected, and the meteorological station henceforth manned by an RAAF officer and four assistants. Roads and landings were constructed, and camp sites established. The next stage of work began in February 1952, in the wake of the December decision to proceed with the test. A detachment of No. 5 Airfield Construction Squadron was flown to Onslow from RAAF Bankstown in two RAAF Dakota aircraft, and were then taken to the islands by the Bathurst-class corvette . Karangai fetched 100 cubic metres (90 MTON) of Marston Mat from Darwin that was used for road works and hardstands. The SS Dorrigo brought in another 100 cubic metres (90 MTON) three weeks later. A water supply was also developed. To bring water from the Fortescue River, a quantity of 100-millimetre (4 in) Victaulic-coupling pipe was brought from the Department of Works in Sydney and the Woomera Rocket Range in South Australia. Because the pipe was laid around obstacles, this proved to be insufficient. No more pipe was in storage, so a firm in Melbourne was asked to make some. An order was placed on a Friday evening, and the pipe was shipped the following Thursday morning, making its way to the Fortescue River by road and rail. The system delivered up to 15,000 litres (3,400 imp gal) per hour to a jetty on the Fortescue estuary, from which it was taken to the islands by the 120ft Motor Lighter MWL 251. The British assembled a small fleet for Operation Hurricane that included the escort carrier HMS Campania, which served as the flagship, and the LSTs Narvik, Zeebrugge and Tracker, under the command of Rear Admiral A. D. Torlesse. Leonard Tyte from the AERE was appointed the technical director. Campania had five aircraft embarked, three Westland WS-51 Dragonfly helicopters and two Supermarine Sea Otter amphibians. Between them, the LSTs carried five LCMs and twelve LCAs. The bomb, less its radioactive components, was assembled at Foulness, and then taken to the River-class frigate HMS Plym on 5 June 1952 for transport to Australia. It took Campania and Plym eight weeks to make the voyage, as they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope instead of traversing the Suez Canal, because there was unrest in Egypt at the time. The Montebello Islands were reached on 8 August. Plym was anchored in 12 metres (39 ft) of water, 350 metres (1,150 ft) off Trimouille Island. The radioactive components, the plutonium core and polonium-beryllium neutron initiator, went by air, flying from RAF Lyneham to Singapore in Handley Page Hastings aircraft via Cyprus, Sharjah and Ceylon. From Singapore they made the final leg of their journey in a Short Sunderland flying boat. The British bomb design was similar to that of the American Fat Man, but for reasons of safety and efficiency the British design incorporated a levitated pit, in which there was an air gap between the uranium tamper and the plutonium core. This gave the explosion time to build up momentum, similar in principle to a hammer hitting a nail, enabling less plutonium to be used. The British fleet was joined by eleven RAN ships, including the aircraft carrier with 805 and 817 Squadrons embarked, and its four escorts, the destroyer , and frigates , and . The Defence (Special Undertakings) Act (1952) was passed through the Parliament of Australia between 4 and 6 June 1952, and received assent on 10 June. Under this act, the area within a 72-kilometre (45 mi) radius of Flag Island was declared a prohibited area for safety and security reasons. That some of this was outside Australia's 4.8-kilometre (3 mi) territorial waters attracted comment. The frigate was tasked with patrolling the prohibited area, while its sister ship acted as a weather ship. Logistical support was provided by , and Mildura, the motor water lighter MWL 251 and the motor refrigeration lighter MRL 252, and the tugboat , which towed a fuel barge. Dakotas of No. 86 Wing RAAF provided air patrols and a weekly courier run. ## Operation The main site, known as H1, was established on the south-east corner of Hermite Island. This was the location of the control room from which the bomb would be detonated, along with the equipment to monitor the firing circuits and telemetry. It was also the location of the generators that provided electric power and recharged the batteries of portable devices, and ultra-high-speed cameras operating at up to 8,000 frames per second. Other camera equipment was set up on Alpha Island and Northwest Island. Most of the monitoring equipment was positioned on Trimouille Island, closer to the explosion. Here, there were a plethora of blast, pressure and seismographic gauges. There were also some 200 empty fuel containers for measuring the blast, a technique that Penney had employed on Operation Crossroads. There were thermometers and calorimeters for measuring the flash, and samples of paints and fabrics for determining the effect on them. Plants would be studied to measure their uptake of fission products, particularly radioactive iodine and strontium. Stores were unloaded at beachhead H2 on Hermite Island, between Brandy Bay and Buttercup Island, whence the RAAF had built a road to H1. A stores compound was established at Gladstone Beach on Trimouille Island, known as T3. The original intention was that the scientists would stay on Campania, commuting to the islands each day, but the survey party had misjudged the tides; Campania could not enter the lagoon, and had to anchor in the Parting Pool. The pinnaces could not tie up alongside Campania at night, and had to be moored several miles away. Transferring to the boats in choppy waters was hazardous. One scientist fell in the sea and was rescued by Commander Douglas Bromley, Campania's executive officer. Rough seas prevented much work being done between 10 and 14 August. It took about an hour and a half to get from Campania to H2, and travelling between Plym and Campania took between two and three hours. Even when a boat was on call it could take 45 minutes to respond. Boat availability soon became a problem with only five LCMs, leaving personnel waiting for one to arrive. The twelve smaller LCAs were also employed; although they could operate when the tides made waters too shallow for the pinnaces, their wooden bottoms were easily holed by coral outcrops. On 15 August, some men were transferred from Campania by one of its three Dragonfly helicopters, but the weather closed in and they could not be picked up again, having to find shelter on Tracker and Zeebrugge, which were moored in the lagoon. To get around these problems, tented camps were established for the scientists at H1 on Hermite Island and Cocoa Beach (also known as T2) on Trimouille Island. Scientific rehearsals were held on 12 and 13 September. This was followed by an operational rehearsal on 19 September, which included fully assembling the bomb, since the radioactive components had arrived the day before on a Sunderland. Penney arrived by air on 22 September. Everything was ready by 30 September, and the only remaining factor was the weather. This was unfavourable on 1 October but improved the following day, when Penney designated 3 October as the date for the test. The final countdown commenced at 07:45 local time on 3 October 1952. Plym was moored a few hundred meters west of T2 (approx 20°24'16"S, 115°34"E). The bomb was successfully detonated at 07:59:24 on 3 October 1952 local time, which was 23:59:24 on 2 October 1952 UTC, 00:59:24 on 3 October in London, and 07:59:24 on 3 October in Perth. The explosion occurred 2.7 metres (8 ft 10 in) below the water line, and left a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed 6 metres (20 ft) deep and 300 metres (980 ft) across. The yield was estimated at 25 kilotons of TNT (100 TJ). All that was left of Plym was a "gluey black substance" that washed up on the shore of Trimouille Island. Derek Hickman, a Royal Engineer observing the blast aboard Zeebrugge, later said of Plym, "all that was left of her were a few fist-sized pieces of metal that fell like rain, and the shape of the frigate scorched on the sea bed." The bomb had performed exactly as expected. Two Dragonfly helicopters flew in to gather a sample of contaminated seawater from the lagoon. Scientists in gas masks and protective gear visited points in pinnaces to collect samples and retrieve recordings. Tracker controlled this aspect, as it had the decontamination facilities. Air samples were collected by RAAF Avro Lincoln aircraft. Although the feared tidal surge had not occurred, radioactive contamination of the islands was widespread and severe. It was clear that had an atomic bomb exploded in a British port, it would have been a catastrophe worse than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fallout cloud rose to 3,000 metres (10,000 ft) and was blown out to sea, as intended; but later reversed direction and blew over the Australian mainland. Very low levels of radioactivity were detected as far away as Brisbane. Penney and some of his staff returned by air on 9 October. He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire on 23 October 1952 for his role in Operation Hurricane. Torlesse was supposed to accompany him, but in view of the degree of radioactive contamination, he felt he could not leave his command. He sent Captain D. P. Willan, the skipper of Narvik in his stead. The Royal Navy ships departed the Montebello Islands on 31 October. Most of the scientific staff were dropped off at Fremantle, and returned to Britain on RAF Transport Command aircraft. The rest returned on Campania, which arrived in the United Kingdom on 15 December. Hawkesbury continued to patrol the area until 15 January 1953. ## Outcome Two more nuclear tests were conducted in the Montebello Islands as part of Operation Mosaic in 1956, the detonations taking place on Alpha and Trimouille Islands. By the 1980s the radioactivity had decayed to the point where it was no longer hazardous to the casual visitor, but there were still radioactive metal fragments containing cobalt-60, the remains of Plym. The island remained a prohibited area until 1992. A 2006 zoological survey found that the wildlife had recovered, and that the Aprasia rostrata, the legless lizard discovered by Hill, was not extinct. As part of the Gorgon gas project, rats and feral cats were eradicated from the Montebello Islands in 2009, and birds and marsupials were transplanted from nearby Barrow Island to Hermite Island. Today, the Montebello Islands are a park. Visitors are advised not to spend more than an hour per day at the test sites, or to take relics of the tests as souvenirs. A pyramid-shaped obelisk marks the site of the explosion on Alpha Island. In 1992, Australian scientists Keith Wise and John Moroney of the Australian Radiation Laboratory estimated that the collective dose to the Australian population due to the test was 110-man-sieverts, statistically enough to have caused one death from cancer. Of the 1,518 personnel involved who were issued with film badges, 1,263 recorded no measurable amount of radiation, and 14 recorded 5 millisieverts (mSv) over the course of the whole operation. None recorded more than 50 mSv. Dosimeters and film badges were not issued to the crews of the RAAF Lincolns who gathered radioactive samples, but later experience showed that exposure would not have been medically significant. Studies of British veterans of all nuclear tests in 1983, 1988, 1993 and 2003 did not find conclusive evidence of increased mortality or health effects. A 2006 study of nearly 11,000 Australian participants of the British nuclear testing program showed that participants had an 18% increased mortality from cancers and a 23% increase in overall cancer incidence, but the increase in cancer mortality and incidence could not be linked to the radiation exposure from nuclear testing, but rather to solar radiation. With the success of Operation Hurricane, Britain became the third nuclear power after the United States and the Soviet Union. The first production bombs, of the Blue Danube design, based on the Hurricane device, were delivered to the RAF in November 1953 and, two years later, the RAF had bombers capable of carrying them. In the interim, the UK relied on the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) for its nuclear deterrent. SAC began deploying nuclear-capable bombers to the UK in April 1949. Four weeks after Operation Hurricane, the United States successfully demonstrated a hydrogen bomb. The technology mastered in Operation Hurricane was six years old, and with the hydrogen bomb in hand, the US Congress saw no benefit in renewing cooperation. All the while Britain strove for independence, at the same time it sought interdependence in the form of a renewal of the Special Relationship with the United States. As successful as it was, Operation Hurricane fell short on both counts. ## Summary

Slate industry in Wales

The existence of a slate industry in Wales is attested since the Roman period, when slate was used to roof the fort at Segontium, now Caernarfon. The slate industry grew slowly until the early 18th century, then rapidly during the Industrial Revolution in Wales until the late 19th century, at which time the most important slate producing areas were in northwest Wales. These sites included the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda, the Dinorwic Quarry near Llanberis, the Nantlle Valley quarries, and Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the slate was mined rather than quarried. Penrhyn and Dinorwig were the two largest slate quarries in the world, and the Oakeley mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog was the largest slate mine in the world. Slate is mainly used for roofing, but is also produced as thicker slab for a variety of uses including flooring, worktops and headstones. Up to the end of the 18th century, slate was extracted on a small scale by groups of quarrymen who paid a royalty to the landlord, carted slate to the ports, and then shipped it to England, Ireland and sometimes France. Towards the close of the century, the landowners began to operate the quarries themselves, on a larger scale. After the government abolished slate duty in 1831, rapid expansion was propelled by the building of narrow gauge railways to transport the slates to the ports. The slate industry dominated the economy of north-west Wales during the second half of the 19th century, but was on a much smaller scale elsewhere. In 1898, a work force of 17,000 men produced half a million tons of slate. A bitter industrial dispute at the Penrhyn Quarry between 1900 and 1903 marked the beginning of its decline, and the First World War saw a great reduction in the number of men employed in the industry. The Great Depression and Second World War led to the closure of many smaller quarries, and competition from other roofing materials, particularly tiles, resulted in the closure of most of the larger quarries in the 1960s and 1970s. Slate production continues on a much reduced scale. On 28 July 2021, the slate landscape of northwest Wales was awarded the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, whilst as early as 2018 Welsh slate was designated by the International Union of Geological Sciences as a Global Heritage Stone Resource. ## Beginnings The slate deposits of Wales belong to three geological series: Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian. The Cambrian deposits run south-west from Conwy to near Criccieth; these deposits were quarried in the Penrhyn and Dinorwig quarries and in the Nantlle Valley. There are smaller outcrops elsewhere, for example on Anglesey. The Ordovician deposits run south-west from Betws-y-Coed to Porthmadog; these were the deposits mined at Blaenau Ffestiniog. There is another band of Ordovician slate further south, running from Llangynnog to Aberdyfi, quarried mainly in the Corris area, with a few outcrops in south-west Wales, notably Pembrokeshire. The Silurian deposits are mainly further east in the Dee valley and around Machynlleth. The virtues of slate as a building and roofing material have been recognised since the Roman period. The Roman fort at Segontium, Caernarfon, was originally roofed with tiles, but the later levels contain numerous slates, used for both roofing and flooring. The nearest deposits are about five miles (8 km) away in the Cilgwyn area, indicating that the slates were not used merely because they were available on-site. During the mediaeval period, there was small-scale quarrying of slate in several areas. The Cilgwyn quarry in the Nantlle Valley dates from the 12th century, and is thought to be the oldest in Wales. The first record of slate quarrying in the neighbourhood of the later Penrhyn Quarry was in 1413, when a rent-roll of Gwilym ap Griffith records that several of his tenants were paid 10 pence each for working 5,000 slates. Aberllefenni Slate Quarry may have started operating as a slate mine as early as the 14th century. The earliest confirmed date of operating dates from the early 16th century when the local house Plas Aberllefenni was roofed in slates from this quarry. Transport problems meant that the slate was usually used fairly close to the quarries. There was some transport by sea. A poem by the 15th century poet Guto'r Glyn asks the Dean of Bangor to send him a shipload of slates from Aberogwen, near Bangor, to Rhuddlan to roof a house at Henllan, near Denbigh. The wreck of a wooden ship carrying finished slates was discovered in the Menai Strait and is thought to date from the 16th century. By the second half of the 16th century, there was a small export trade of slates to Ireland from ports such as Beaumaris and Caernarfon. Slate exports from the Penrhyn estate are recorded from 1713 when 14 shipments totalling 415,000 slates were sent to Dublin. The slates were carried to the ports by pack-horses, and later by carts. This was sometimes done by women, the only female involvement in what was otherwise an exclusively male industry. Until the late 18th century, slate was extracted from many small pits by small partnerships of local men, who did not own the capital to expand further. The quarrymen usually had to pay a rent or royalty to the landlord, though the quarrymen at Cilgwyn did not. A letter from the agent of the Penrhyn estate, John Paynter, in 1738 complains that competition from Cilgwyn was affecting the sales of Penrhyn slates. The Cilgwyn slates could be extracted more cheaply and sold at a higher price. Penrhyn introduced larger sizes of slate between 1730 and 1740, and gave these sizes the names which became standard. These ranged from "Duchesses", the largest at 24 inches (610 mm) by 12 inches (300 mm), through "Countesses", "Ladies" and "Doubles" to the smallest "Singles". ## Growth (1760–1830) Methusalem Jones, previously a quarryman at Cilgwyn, began to work the Diffwys quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog in the 1760s, which became the first large quarry in the area. The large landowners were initially content to issue "take notes", allowing individuals to quarry slates on their lands for a yearly rent of a few shillings and a royalty on the slates produced. The first landowner to take over the working of slates on his land was the owner of the Penrhyn estate, Richard Pennant, later Baron Penrhyn. In 1782, the men working quarries on the estate were bought out or ejected, and Pennant appointed James Greenfield as agent. The same year, Lord Penrhyn opened a new quarry at Caebraichycafn near Bethesda, which as Penrhyn Quarry would become the largest slate quarry in the world. By 1792, this quarry was employing 500 men and producing 15,000 tons of slate per year. At Dinorwig, a single large partnership took over in 1787, and in 1809 the landowner, Thomas Assheton Smith of Vaynol, took the management of the quarry into his own hands. The Cilgwyn quarries were taken over by a company in 1800, and the scattered workings at all three locations were amalgamated into a single quarry. The first steam engine to be used in the slate industry was a pump installed at the Hafodlas quarry in the Nantlle Valley in 1807, but most quarries relied on hydropower to drive machinery. Wales was by now producing more than half the United Kingdom's output of slate, 26,000 tons out of a total UK production of 45,000 tons in 1793. In July 1794, the government imposed a 20% tax on all slate carried coastwise, which put the Welsh producers at a disadvantage compared to inland producers who could use the canal network to distribute their product. There was no tax on slates sent overseas, and exports to the United States gradually increased. The Penrhyn Quarry continued to grow, and in 1799 Greenfield introduced the system of "galleries", huge terraces from 9 metres to 21 metres in depth. In 1798, Lord Penrhyn constructed the horse-drawn Llandegai Tramway to transport slates from Penrhyn Quarry, and in 1801 this was replaced by the narrow gauge Penrhyn Quarry Railway, one of the earliest railway lines. The slates were transported to the sea at Port Penrhyn which had been constructed in the 1790s. The Padarn Railway was opened in 1824 as a tramway for the Dinorwig Quarry, and converted to a railway in 1843. It ran from Gilfach Ddu near Llanberis to Port Dinorwic at Y Felinheli. The Nantlle Railway was built in 1828 and was operated using horse-power to carry slate from several slate quarries in the Nantlle Valley to the harbour at Caernarfon. ## Peak production (1831–1878) ### Expansion at Blaenau Ffestiniog In 1831 slate duty was abolished, and this helped to produce a rapid expansion in the industry, particularly since the duty on tiles was not abolished until 1833. The Ffestiniog Railway line was constructed between 1833 and 1836 to transport slate from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog, where it was loaded onto ships. The railway was graded so that loaded slate waggons could be run by gravity downhill all the way from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the port. The empty waggons were hauled back up by horses, which travelled down in 'dandy' waggons. This helped expansion at the Blaenau Ffestiniog quarries, which had previously had to cart the slate to Maentwrog to be loaded onto small boats and taken down the River Dwyryd to the estuary, where it was transferred to larger vessels. There was further expansion at Blaenau when John Whitehead Greaves, who had been running the Votty quarry since 1833, took a lease on the land between this quarry and the main Ffestiniog to Betws-y-Coed road. After years of digging he struck the famous Old Vein in 1846 in what became the Llechwedd quarry. A fire which destroyed a large part of Hamburg in 1842 led to a demand for slate for rebuilding, and Germany became an important market, particularly for Ffestiniog slate. ### Mechanization and increased production In 1843, the Padarn Railway became the first quarry railway to use steam locomotives, and the transport of slate by train rather than by ship was made easier when the London and North Western Railway built branches to connect Port Penrhyn and Port Dinorwic to the main line in 1852. The Corris Railway opened as the horse-worked Corris, Machynlleth & River Dovey Tramroad in 1859, connecting the slate quarries around Corris and Aberllefenni with wharves on the estuary of the River Dyfi. The Ffestiniog Railway converted to steam in 1863, and the Talyllyn Railway was opened in 1866 to serve the Bryn Eglwys quarry above the village of Abergynolwyn. Bryn Eglwys grew to be one of the largest quarries in mid Wales, employing 300 men and producing 30% of the total output of the Corris district. The Cardigan Railway was opened in 1873, partly to carry slate traffic, and enabled the Glogue quarry in Pembrokeshire to grow to employ 80 men. Mechanization was gradually introduced to make most aspects of the industry more efficient, particularly at Blaenau Ffestiniog where the Ordovician slate was less brittle than the Cambrian slate further north, and therefore easier to work by machine. The slate mill evolved between 1840 and 1860, powered by a single line shaft running along the building and bringing together operations such as sawing, planing and dressing. In 1859, John Whitehead Greaves invented the Greaves sawing table to produce blocks for the splitter, then in 1856 introduced a rotary machine to dress the split slate. The splitting of the blocks to produce roofing slates proved resistant to mechanisation, and continued to be done with a mallet and chisel. An extra source of income from the 1860s was the production of "slab", thicker pieces of slate which were planed and used for many purposes, for example flooring, tombstones and billiard tables. The larger quarries could be highly profitable. The Mining Journal estimated in 1859 that the Penrhyn quarries produced an annual net profit of £100,000, and the Dinorwig Quarry £70,000 a year. From 1860 onwards slate prices rose steadily. Quarries expanded and the population of the quarrying districts increased, for example the population of Ffestiniog parish increased from 732 in 1801 to 11,274 in 1881. Total Welsh production reached 350,000 tons a year by the end of the 1860s. Of this total, over 100,000 tons came from the Bethesda area, mainly from the Penrhyn Quarry. Blaenau Ffestiniog produced almost as much, and the Dinorwig Quarry alone produced 80,000 tons per year. The Nantlle Valley quarries produced 40,000 tons, while the remainder of Wales outside these areas produced only about 20,000 tons per year. By the late 1870s, Wales was producing 450,000 tons of slate per year, compared with just over 50,000 tons for the rest of the United Kingdom, which then included Ireland. In 1882, 92% of the United Kingdom's production was from Wales with the quarries at Penrhyn and Dinorwig producing half of this between them. Alun Richards comments on the importance of the slate industry: > It dominated the economy of the north-west of Wales, where, by the middle of the 19thC. it accounted for almost half the total revenues from trade, industry and the professions, and in Wales as a whole, its output value compared with that of coal. The prosperity of the slate industry led to the growth of a number of other associated industries. Shipbuilding increased at a number of coastal locations, particularly at Porthmadog, where 201 ships were built between 1836 and 1880. Engineering companies were set up to supply the quarries, notably De Winton at Caernarfon. In 1870, De Winton built and equipped an entire workshop for the Dinorwig Quarry, with machinery powered by overhead shafting that in its turn was driven by the largest water-wheel in the United Kingdom, over 50 feet in diameter. ### Workers There were several different categories of worker in the quarries. The quarrymen proper, who made up just over 50% of the workforce, worked the slate in partnerships of three, four, six or eight, known as "bargain gangs". A gang of four typically consisted of two "rockmen" who would blast the rock to produce blocks, a splitter, who would split the blocks with hammer and chisel, and a dresser. A rybelwr would usually be a boy learning his trade, who would wander around the galleries offering assistance to the gangs. Sometimes a gang would give him a block of slate to split. Other groups were the "bad rockmen" who usually worked in crews of three, removing unworkable rock from the face, and the "rubbish men" who cleared the waste rock from the galleries and built the tips of waste which surrounded the quarry. Only about a tenth, or less, of the rock extracted became finished product. The bad rockmen and rubbish men were usually paid by the ton of material removed, but the quarrymen were paid according to a more complicated system. Part of the payment was determined by the number of slates the gang produced, but this could vary greatly according to the nature of the rock in the section allocated to them. The men would therefore be paid an extra sum of "poundage" per pound's worth of slate produced. "Bargains" were let by the setting steward, who would agree a price for a certain area of rock. If the rock in the bargain allocated to a gang was poor, they would be paid a higher poundage, while good rock meant a lower poundage. The first Monday of every month was "bargain letting day" when these agreements were made between men and management. The men had to pay for their ropes and chains, for tools and for services such as sharpening and repairing. Subs (advances) were paid every week, everything being settled up on the "day of the big pay". If conditions had not been good, the men could end up owing the management money. This system was not finally abolished until after the Second World War. Because of this arrangement, the men tended to see themselves as independent contractors rather than employees on a wage, and trade unions were slow to develop. There were grievances however, including unfairness in setting bargains and disputes over days off. The North Wales Quarrymen's Union (NWQMU) was formed in 1874, and the same year there were disputes at Dinorwig and then at Penrhyn. Both these disputes ended in victory for the workers, and by May 1878, the union had 8,368 members. One of the founders of the union, Morgan Richards, described in 1876 the conditions when he started work in the quarries forty years before: > I well remember the time when I was myself a child of bondage; when my father and neighbours, as well as myself, had to rise early, to walk five miles (8 km) before six in the morning, and the same distance home after six in the evening; to work hard from six to six; to dine on cold coffee, or a cup of buttermilk, and a slice of bread and butter; and to support (as some of them had to do) a family of perhaps five, eight or ten children on wages averaging from 12s to 16s a week. ## Industrial unrest and decline (1879–1938) ### Labour disputes In 1879, a period of twenty years of almost uninterrupted growth came to an end, and the slate industry was hit by a recession which lasted until the 1890s. Management responded by tightening rules and making it more difficult for the men to take time off. Labour relations were worsened by differences in language, religion and politics between the two sides. The owners and top managers at most of the quarries were English-speaking, Anglican and Tory, while the quarrymen were Welsh-speaking and mainly Nonconformist and Liberal. Negotiations between the two sides usually involved the use of interpreters. In October 1885, there was a dispute at Dinorwig over the curtailing of holidays which led to a lock-out lasting until February 1886. At the Penrhyn Quarry, George Sholto Gordon Douglas-Pennant took over from his father Edward Gordon Douglas-Pennant in 1885, and in 1886 appointed E. A. Young as chief manager. A more stringent management regime was introduced, and relations with the workforce deteriorated. This culminated in the suspension of 57 members of the union committee and 17 other men in September 1896, leading to a strike which lasted eleven months. The men were eventually obliged to go back to work, essentially on the management's terms, in August 1897. This strike became known as "The Penrhyn Lockout". There was an upturn in trade in 1892, heralding another period of growth in the industry. This growth was mainly at Blaenau Ffestiniog and in the Nantlle Valley, where the workforce at Penyrorsedd reached 450. Slate production in Wales peaked at over half a million tons in 1898, with 17,000 men employed in the industry. A second lock-out or strike at the Penrhyn Quarry began on 22 November 1900 and lasted for three years. The causes of the dispute were complex, but included the extension of a system of contracting out parts of the quarry. The quarrymen, instead of arranging their own bargains, would find themselves working for a contractor. The union's funds for strike pay were inadequate, and there was a great deal of hardship among the 2,800 workers. Lord Penrhyn reopened the quarry in June 1901, and about 500 men returned to work, to be castigated as "traitors" by the remainder. Eventually the workers were forced to return to work in November 1903 on terms laid down by Lord Penrhyn. Many of the men considered to have been prominent in the union were not re-employed, and many of those who had left the area to seek work elsewhere did not return. The dispute left a lasting legacy of bitterness in the Bethesda area. ### Decline in production The loss of production at Penrhyn led to a temporary shortage of slates and kept prices high, but part of the shortfall was made up by imports. French exports of slate to the UK increased from 40,000 tons in 1898 to 105,000 tons in 1902. After 1903 there was a depression in the slate industry which led to reductions in pay and job losses. New techniques in tile manufacture had reduced costs, making tiles more competitive. In addition, several countries had placed tariffs on the import of British slate, while a slump in the home building trade had reduced domestic demand; finally French slate producers had increased their exports to the United Kingdom. All of this led to a prolonged decline in demand for Welsh slate. Eight Ffestiniog quarries closed between 1908 and 1913, and the Oakley dismissed 350 men in 1909. R. Merfyn Jones comments: > The effects of this depression on the quarrying districts were deep and painful. Unemployment and emigration became constant features of the slate communities; distress was widespread. In the quarries there was short-time working, closures and reductions in earnings. Between 1906 and 1913 the number of men at work in the quarries of the Ffestiniog district shrank by 28 per cent, in Dyffryn Nantlle the number at work fell even more dramatically by 38 per cent. The First World War hit the slate industry badly, particularly in Blaenau Ffestiniog where exports to Germany had been an important source of income. Cilgwyn, the oldest quarry in Wales, closed in 1914, though it later reopened. In 1917, slate quarrying was declared a non-essential industry and a number of quarries were closed for the remainder of the war. The demand for new houses after the end of the war brought back a measure of prosperity; in the slate mines of Blaenau Ffestiniog production was almost back to 1913 levels by 1927, but in the quarries the output was still well below the pre-war level. The Great Depression in the 1930s led to cuts in production, with exports particularly hard hit. The quarries and mines made increasing use of mechanisation from the start of the 20th century, with electricity replacing steam and water as a power source. The Llechwedd quarry introduced its first electrical plant in 1891, and in 1906, a hydro-electric plant was opened in Cwm Dyli, on the lower slopes of Snowdon, which supplied electricity to the largest quarries in the area. The use of electric saws and other machinery reduced the hard manual labour involved in extracting the slate, but produced much more slate dust than the old manual methods, leading to an increased incidence of silicosis. The work was also dangerous in other ways, with the blasting operations responsible for many deaths. A government enquiry in 1893 found that the death rate for underground workers in the slate mines was 3.23 per thousand, higher than the rate for coal miners. ## End of large-scale production (1939–2005) The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to a severe drop in trade. Part of the Manod quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog was used to store art treasures from the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery. The number of men employed in the slate industry in North Wales dropped from 7,589 in 1939 to 3,520 by the end of the war. In 1945, total production was only 70,000 tons a year, and fewer than 20 quarries were still open compared with 40 before the war. The Nantlle Valley had been particularly hard hit, with only 350 workers employed in the entire district, compared with 1,000 in 1937. Demand for slate was dropping as tiles were increasingly used for roofing, and imports from countries such as Portugal, France and Italy were increasing. There was some increased demand for slates to repair bombed buildings after the end of the war, but the use of slate for new buildings was banned, apart from the smallest sizes. This ban was lifted in 1949. Total production of slate in Wales declined from 54,000 tons in 1958 to 22,000 tons in 1970. The Diffwys quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog closed in 1955 after almost two centuries of operation. North Wales was dependent upon slate quarrying and quarry closures led to a growth in unemployment in 1959. The nearby Votty and Bowydd quarries also closed in 1963 and in 1969, 300 quarrymen lost their jobs when the Dinorwic quarry closed. The following year the Dorothea quarry in the Nantlle Valley and the Braichgoch quarry near Corris announced their closure. Oakeley at Blaenau Ffestiniog closed in 1971, but was later reopened by another company. By 1972, fewer than 1,000 men were employed in the North Wales slate industry. For many years, the quarry owners had denied that slate dust was the cause of the high levels of silicosis suffered by quarrymen. From 1909, they had been responsible for all accidents and illnesses caused by the work, but had managed to persuade successive governments that slate dust was harmless. In 1979, after a long struggle, the government recognised silicosis as an industrial disease meriting compensation. There was an increase in demand for slate in the 1980s, and although this came too late for many quarries there was still some production in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area at the Oakeley, Llechwedd and Cwt-y-Bugail quarries, though the bulk of roofing slate production was at the Penrhyn Quarry. Further mechanisation was introduced, with a computerised laser beam being used to aid the sawing of the slate blocks. ## Welsh slate today ### Quarries still producing slate As of 2022, the Penrhyn Quarry is still producing slate, though at a much reduced capacity from its heyday at the end of the 19th century. In 1995, it accounted for almost 50% of UK production. It is currently owned and operated by Welsh Slate Ltd (part of the Breedon Group). It was previously owned by the Lagan Group, which also owned and carried out some operations at the Oakeley quarry at Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Pen yr Orsedd quarry in the Nantlle Vale, and the Cwt-y-Bugail quarry. In March 2010 the company announced its decision to mothball the Oakeley quarry because of subsidence at the site. The Greaves Welsh Slate Company produces roofing slates and other slate products from Llechwedd, and work also continues at the Berwyn Quarry near Llangollen. The final large-scale underground working to close was Maenofferen, associated with the Llechwedd tourist mine, in 1999: part of this site, now effectively amalgamated with Votty / Bowydd, is still worked by untopping. The Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff uses waste slate in many different colours in its design: purple slate from Penrhyn, blue from Cwt-y-Bugail, green from Nantlle, grey from Llechwedd, and black from Corris. ### Visitor attractions Part of the Dinorwig Slate Quarry is now within the Padarn Country Park, and the other part houses the Dinorwig power station in caverns under the old quarry workings. The National Slate Museum is located in some of the quarry workshops. The museum has displays including Victorian slate-workers' cottages that once stood at Tanygrisiau near Blaenau Ffestiniog. The museum has a working water wheel, and a restored incline formerly used to carry slate waggons uphill and downhill. In Blaenau Ffestiniog, the Llechwedd Slate Caverns have been converted into a visitor attraction. Visitors can travel on the Miners' Tramway or descend into the Deep Mine, via the steepest cable railway in Europe, to explore this former slate mine and learn how slate was extracted and processed and about the lives of the miners. The Braichgoch slate mines at Corris have been converted into a tourist attraction named "King Arthur's Labyrinth" where visitors are taken underground by boat along a subterranean river and walk through the caverns to see audiovisual presentations of the Arthurian legends. The Llwyngwern quarry near Machynlleth is now the site of the Centre for Alternative Technology. A number of the railways which carried the slates to the ports have been restored as tourist attractions, for example the Ffestiniog Railway and the Talyllyn Railway. ## Slate landscape of Northwest Wales - World Heritage status In July 2021, after development of a bid for over 10 years, the slate landscape of Northwest Wales was inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The areas included in the nomination include Penrhyn quarry and the Ogwen Valley, Dinorwic quarry, Nantlle Valley, Gorseddau and Prince of Wales quarries, Ffestiniog and Porthmadog, including the Ffestiniog Railway, and Abergynolwyn and Bryn Eglwys quarry, including the Talyllyn Railway. ## Cultural influences The Welsh slate industry was essentially a Welsh-speaking industry. Most of the workforce in the main slate-producing areas of North Wales were drawn from the local area, with little immigration from outside Wales. The industry had a considerable influence on the culture of the area and on that of Wales as a whole. The caban, the cabin where the quarrymen gathered for their lunch break, was often the scene of wide-ranging discussions, which were often formally minuted. A surviving set of minutes from a caban at the Llechwedd mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog for 1908–1910 records discussions on Church Disestablishment, tariff reform and other political topics. Eisteddfodau were held, poetry composed and discussed and most of the larger quarries had their own band, with the Oakley band particularly famous. Burn calculates that there are around fifty men judged worthy of an entry in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography who started their working lives as slate quarrymen, compared to only four owners, though obviously there was also a distinct disparity in the numbers of the two groups. A number of Welsh writers have drawn on the lives of the quarrymen for their material, for example the novels of T. Rowland Hughes. Chwalfa, translated into English as Out of their night (1954), has the Penrhyn Quarry dispute as a background, while Y cychwyn, translated as The beginning (1969), follows the apprenticeship of a young quarryman. Several novels by Kate Roberts, the daughter of a quarryman, give a picture of the area around Rhosgadfan, where the slate industry was on a smaller scale and many of the quarrymen were also smallholders. Her novel Traed mewn cyffion (1936), translated as Feet in chains (2002), gives a vivid picture of the struggles of a quarrying family in the period between 1880 and 1914. Y Chwarelwr ("The Quarryman") produced in 1935 was the first Welsh-language film. It showed various aspects of a slate quarryman's life at Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Tommy Amaker

American basketball player and coach (born 1965)

Harold Tommy Amaker Jr. (/ˈæməkər/; born June 6, 1965) is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men's basketball team. He has also coached for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He played point guard and later served as an assistant coach at Duke University under Mike Krzyzewski. An All-American player, Amaker set numerous records and earned many honors and awards. He took Seton Hall to the post season in each of his four seasons as their coach, helped Michigan win the National Invitation Tournament the year after a probationary ban from postseason play, and had the three highest single-season win totals in the history of Harvard basketball, the school's first six Ivy League championships and first NCAA tournament victory. Amaker was a high school basketball star at Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School from 1979 to 1983 under Coach Paul (Red) Jenkins. Amaker led the Woodson Cavaliers to four straight Northern District titles, including victories over the national powerhouse DeMatha Catholic High School. A McDonald's All-American, Amaker also earned the Wooden Defensive Player of the Year award in 1983, awarded to the nation's best high school defensive player. He averaged almost 18 points, and contributed 7.5 assists and 3.5 steals per game while at Woodson. In December of 1992, the Connection named Amaker to the Connection Dream Team, as a point guard.McDonald's All-American and a Parade All-American. As a college basketball player, he set most of the assists records and many steals records for Duke basketball. He also set the Atlantic Coast Conference single-season games played and games started records. Among his numerous accolades, he was the first winner of the NABC Defensive Player of the Year, and he was a third team All-American. Amaker was an assistant coach for the Duke Blue Devils men's basketball under Krzyzewski for nine seasons. His first four seasons were part of a five-year streak of Final Four appearances by Duke (including back-to-back national championships). As a head coach, Amaker took the Seton Hall Pirates to postseason tournaments (NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament – 2000 and National Invitation Tournament – 1998, 1999, and 2001) in each of his four seasons as their coach. He dealt with the turmoil and self-imposed sanctions of the University of Michigan basketball scandal in his first years with Michigan, where he eventually won the 2004 National Invitation Tournament with the 2003–04 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team and finished as the runner-up with Michigan in the 2006 National Invitation Tournament. In his tenure as Harvard men's basketball coach, he was the first coach to lead the Crimson to victory over a ranked opponent with the . He also coached the 2009–10 Harvard Crimson men's basketball team into the postseason (2010 CollegeInsider.com Tournament) in his third year there, which included the highest single-season victory total (21) in school history. In the summer of 2010, the NCAA ruled that Amaker had committed a recruiting violation, resulting in NCAA-mandated recruiting restrictions, the university's first NCAA penalty of the men's basketball program. The 2010–11 team became the first Harvard men's basketball team to clinch a share of the Ivy League championship and surpassed the prior season win total (23). The 2011–12 team became the first in school history to appear in the Associated Press (AP) and Coaches Polls and, for the third year in a row, established a new school record for wins (26). Amaker's 2011–12, 2012–13, 2013–14 and 2014–15 teams repeated as Ivy League champions. The 2012–13 team gave Harvard its first NCAA tournament victory. The 2013–14 team posted a record 27 wins. Amaker became the winningest coach in school history in 2016. ## Early years Amaker was born in Falls Church, Virginia, in 1965. Amaker resided in Falls Church, but he attended W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, because his mother, Alma Amaker, was a high school English teacher in Fairfax County. Her job allowed her to choose among the county schools, her choice made because the school's basketball coach, Red Jenkins, who called Amaker "T-bird", had been impressed with his performances at his youth summer league since Amaker was 10 years old. He began playing varsity for Woodson by December, making him the first freshman to play varsity in the school's history. His mother, whom Jenkins called "his first coach and his best coach," attended his practices and graded papers in the coach's office. Duke University basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski, who had just completed his first season as Duke coach, was in town to evaluate Johnny Dawkins in a 1981 Washington D.C. summer league game, but was convinced to stay for a second game to see Amaker play. Krzyzewski met Amaker's mother and said, "Mrs. Amaker, your son is going to look great in Duke blue." At the time, Amaker had wanted to play for the Maryland Terrapins because his sister Tami went to the University of Maryland, College Park and Amaker idolized Maryland star guard John Lucas. He was recruited eventually to Duke by assistant coach Chuck Swenson, who would later become an assistant coach during Amaker's first five seasons at Michigan from 2001 to 2006. Amaker played on the 1983 McDonald's All-American Team and was also named to the Parade All-American team. According to the Fairfax Connection, the county changed the rules regarding where teachers could send their children due to Amaker's success at Woodson. ## College career Amaker was a star point guard at Duke after becoming a freshman starter for head coach Krzyzewski. He led the team in assists three years and in steals four seasons. While at Duke his roommate for away games was Mike Brey. ### Freshman and sophomore years Dawkins played point guard for the 1982–83 Blue Devils, but moved to shooting guard the following year to make way for Amaker. When Amaker joined the 1983–84 Blue Devils, unranked Duke, led by Dawkins and Amaker, won its first seven games, the longest winning streak of fourth-year head coach Krzyzewski's career. Amaker had a field goal accuracy of over 65 percent in those games. He led Duke to the NCAA Tournament during his 1984 freshman and 1985 sophomore seasons, but neither team advanced to the Sweet Sixteen (regional semifinals). In the quarterfinal round of the 1984 ACC men's basketball tournament against the Mark Price-led Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Amaker hit the game-winning shot with the score tied and less than 10 seconds left in overtime. In some instances, Amaker's defense changed the game by limiting dribble penetration and forcing low shooting percentages regardless of whether he had notable offensive contributions. ### Junior year During Amaker's junior year (1985–86), Duke won the inaugural NIT Season Tip-Off (then known as the preseason National Invitation Tournament) and Amaker had nine assists in the championship game against a Danny Manning-led Kansas team. In the March Carolina–Duke rivalry game against North Carolina Amaker stole the ball from Jeff Lebo and made a layup that gave Duke a late first half three-point lead it never surrendered. The win clinched Duke's first regular season ACC Championship since 1966. According to ESPN college basketball color commentator Dick Vitale, Amaker had a reputation for putting pressure on the ball. That year, he helped the team win the 1986 ACC men's basketball tournament, including a championship game victory over the Price-led Georgia Tech. Duke entered the 1986 NCAA tournament ranked number one with a team that was built around the defensive efforts of its guards, Dawkins and Amaker. In the final four with Duke clinging to a 69–67 lead in a rematch against Kansas, Amaker pulled down the final rebound and sank two clinching free throws in the final five seconds. The win sent Duke to the championship game, giving the team its 21st consecutive victory and an NCAA record 37 single-season victories. Chicago Tribune journalist Robert Markus described Amaker and Dawkins as the best guard combination in the country, although Vitale described Amaker as unknown. The 1985–86 Blue Devils finished as national runner-up in the 1986 NCAA Tournament to Louisville. That year, Amaker recorded 81 steals, second to Jim Spanarkel at that point in Duke history. He set the career steals record, which stood until Shane Battier broke it in 2001. Amaker also holds the Duke single-year NCAA Tournament record with 18 steals in 1986, which had been a tournament record. That year, he had seven steals in two tournament games—against Old Dominion in the second round on March 15 and Louisville in the final on March 31. This seven-steal total stood as the single-game NCAA tournament record for seven years until the 1993 NCAA tournament when Darrell Hawkins had eight for Arkansas against Holy Cross and Grant Hill had eight for Duke against California. The seven steals was a championship game record that was tied by Mookie Blaylock in the 1988 NCAA tournament for Oklahoma against Kansas and was surpassed by Ty Lawson in the 2009 NCAA tournament for North Carolina against Michigan State. Amaker was selected to the 1986 Division I basketball tournament All-NCAA Final Four Team. The 1986 Duke team graduated four of its five starters (Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas and David Henderson), leaving Amaker with an inexperienced supporting cast for his senior season. That year, Amaker was a spokesman against drug and alcohol abuse as part of an NCAA-Fiesta Bowl drug education television program. ### Senior year Muggsy Bogues, Amaker's ACC rival, was his roommate during the July 1986 FIBA World Championship. He played in at least two games in the tournament, the first for a mere two minutes against Puerto Rico, but he played a prominent role in the USA's win over Italy. Amaker won a gold medal while serving on the US national team in the FIBA World Championship, which served as the basketball tournament for the 1986 Goodwill Games. Senior Amaker served as team captain for the 1986–87 Blue Devils, and he led Duke back to the 1987 NCAA tournament, where they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen before losing to eventual champion Indiana. The key players on the team that year were Amaker and sophomore Danny Ferry. During his senior season, the National Collegiate Athletic Association instituted the three-point field goal. Amaker led Duke in three point shooting that year. He hit a three-point shot with 1:39 remaining in overtime against 17–0 (4–0 ACC) Horace Grant-led Clemson to give Duke the lead for good. A few weeks later, with the score tied in regulation at 60 against Notre Dame and on a two-on-one fast break with 16 seconds left, Amaker took a jump shot. Krzyzewski said Duke lost the game because it did not play as smart as its opponent and Markus described this example in his column. In Amaker's final home game, he made a jump shot with 1:15 remaining that put number seventeen Duke, which made all six of its free throws in the final 45 seconds, ahead for good in its rematch against number thirteen Clemson. In the 1987 tournament he led Duke in scoring in its final two games, including 23 against the Rick Calloway/Keith Smart/Steve Alford-led Indiana, who was coached by Bobby Knight, Krzyzewski's college coach. That year, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) awarded Amaker with the first Henry Iba Corinthian Award (also known as the NABC Defensive Player of the Year). Amaker was selected to the 1987 NCAA Men's Basketball All-American third team by the NABC. He was named to the 1987 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament All-Midwest Regional Team. He was a 1987 All-ACC 2nd-team honoree and earned the team co-MVP award with Ferry that year. Amaker earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1987 from Duke. ### Accomplishments Amaker set many Duke career and single-season assists records. He held the record for single-season assists in the years between 1986 and 1990, which was broken by Bobby Hurley. Hurley also broke Amaker's records in career assists per game (5.1, 1987–93) and career assists (708, 1987–92). Steve Wojciechowski broke Amaker's records in single-season assists to turnover ratio (2.88, 1985–97) and career assists to turnover ratio (2.11, 1987–98). Although his single-season assists records were surpassed by Hurley's freshman, sophomore and senior season totals, it still remains a record for a Duke junior. He also held Duke's career NCAA tournament assist average record with 57 in 12 games for a 4.7 average until Hurley surpassed it with 145 in 20 games for a 7.3 average. His school single-game assists record of 14 that he tied (Kevin Billerman, March 2, 1974, vs. North Carolina) vs. on February 19, 1986, was not broken until Hurley's senior 1993 season and is still a record for a junior. Amaker holds several Duke and ACC records for games played. Amaker, Alarie and Dawkins have all started 40 games for the 1985–86 Duke team and both Ferry and Billy King have played 40 games in a season. Amaker's 138 consecutive games started surpassed Alarie and Dawkins' totals of 133. His 138 consecutive games played was a Duke record until Chris Duhon played 144 in a row ending in 2004. Consecutive games started is not shown in the 2009–10 Atlantic Coast Conference Media Guide records section. However, no ACC player has ever played more than 40 games in a season. ## Pro career Following his college basketball career, Amaker was drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics in the 3rd round of the 1987 NBA draft with the 55th pick overall. He was also drafted in the first round of the April 1987 United States Basketball League's draft by the Staten Island Stallions. He was regarded to be too small to play in the NBA at 6 feet (1.8 m) and 155 pounds (70 kg). He was cut from the SuperSonics team on October 21, 1987. Subsequently, he spent three days with the Wyoming Wildcatters of the Continental Basketball Association in Casper, Wyoming. He quickly decided he wanted to return to Duke to pursue a Master of Business Administration (MBA). ## Coaching career ### Duke Amaker accepted a graduate assistant position on Krzyzewski's staff at Duke in 1988 while pursuing his MBA degree from the Fuqua School of Business; the team reached the Final Four of the 1989 NCAA tournament. He was an assistant coach from 1989 through 1997, during which Duke won two NCAA Championships (1991 and 1992) and made two other Final Four appearances (1990 and 1994). By 1992, Duke had been to five consecutive final fours. While an assistant coach, he declined numerous Division I head coaching opportunities. Duke also won four regular season Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball championships (1991, 1992, 1994 and 1997) and the 1992 ACC men's basketball tournament. The 1994–95 season was turbulent. In October 1994, Krzyzewski underwent back surgery. He attempted to return to coaching two weeks later but eventually was re-admitted to Duke University Hospital for four days in January due to related complications. He eventually relinquished control of the team for the season to interim coach Pete Gaudet. After Wimp Sanderson was forced out as coach of Alabama in 1992, Amaker was under consideration to replace him. In 1993, he was the leading candidate to assume the head coaching job at Northwestern when Bill Foster stepped aside to serve as interim athletic director, but at age 27, he declined the job when it was offered, noting that he had only been married one year and saying "It boiled down to us looking at a situation where we were extremely flattered, but a situation that wasn't right for us now." That summer Amaker was one of two college basketball members of the 10-man selection committee for the United States Olympic Team. In 1994, he was on the short list to replace Kevin O'Neill, who left Marquette for a job at Tennessee. In 1995, USC was in negotiations to hire Amaker to replace interim coach Charlie Parker, who replaced George Raveling following a car accident. The reason his negotiations with USC failed was compensation since Amaker was both a Duke assistant coach and earned an additional \$100,000 (US\$ in dollars) through a summer youth day camp. That summer, Duke promoted Amaker from assistant basketball coach to associate head coach. Krzyzewski returned to coaching in October 1995. USC went on to hire Parker, who did not last a full season as head coach. In 1996, Amaker was rumored to be on the short list to replace interim coach Steve Lavin at UCLA in 1997. When the Northwestern job opened up again in 1997, he was not under consideration because athletic director Rick Taylor sought a candidate with Division I head coaching postseason experience. ### Seton Hall In 1997, Amaker took the head coaching position at Seton Hall, who had missed the post season in the two prior years. At 31, Amaker became the youngest head basketball coach in Big East Conference history. Then, he took Seton Hall to the NCAA tournament once (2000) – when his team reached the "Sweet Sixteen" – and to the National Invitation Tournament three times (1998, 1999 and 2001). The earned the sixth seed in the 1998 Big East men's basketball tournament, but were ousted in the first round by eleventh-seeded in overtime in the first round. They ended up in the 1998 National Invitation Tournament where they lost in the first round to to fall to a final record of 15–15. After returning Seton Hall to the post season, Amaker was considered for the Michigan job, but they decided to make interim coach Brian Ellerbe a full-time head coach. Seton Hall's earned the ninth seed in the 1999 Big East men's basketball tournament. They defeated eighth-seeded Notre Dame in the first round, but lost by one point to top-seeded Connecticut, who went on to win the national championship. They were invited to the 1999 National Invitation Tournament where they lost in the first round to and again finished 15–15. According to ESPN, Amaker recruited the \#2 recruiting class in the nation for the class of 2000 while at Seton Hall. The class consisted of Eddie Griffin (ranked by some as the top high school player in the nation), Andre Barrett, and Marcus Toney-El. The Pirates were ranked high on many experts' pre-season rankings. The 1999–2000 Seton Hall team earned the fifth seed in the 2000 Big East men's basketball tournament and earned a victory against twelfth-seeded in the first round, but lost to fourth-seeded Connecticut. The first round win gave the team 20 victories and no Big East team had achieved that number of victories without getting invited to the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in the 21-year history of the conference. They were invited to the 2000 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament where they were seeded tenth in the East Region. They knocked off seventh-seeded Oregon and second-seeded Temple. In the Sweet Sixteen round they were ousted by third-seeded and finished with a 22–10 record. The earned the Big East West Division's sixth seed in the 2001 Big East men's basketball tournament and beat the East Division three seed St. John's and west two seed Georgetown. They were defeated in the semifinals by east top seed Boston College and ended the year at 16–15. They were invited to the 2001 National Invitation Tournament where they lost in the first round to Alabama. The following season, Amaker resigned as the Seton Hall head coach and became head coach at Michigan, replacing Ellerbe, who had been fired. Amaker met with Michigan athletic director Bill Martin in a hotel lobby instead of renting a room because Martin wanted to save money. Word of the meeting got back to ESPN and the New Jersey press was not kind to Amaker, hinting that he was devious and selfish. ### Michigan Amaker inherited a Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team that was five years into the investigation of the University of Michigan basketball scandal. The Wolverines opposed Amaker's former mentor Krzyzewski and the 2001–02 Duke Blue Devils in his seventh game as head coach, but his team lost. Although the 2001–02 Wolverines finished at 11–18, Amaker was able to lead the tenth-seeded team to a victory over seventh-seeded in the 2002 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament before losing to two seed, Ohio State. Michigan finished the 2002–03 season with a 17–13 record, but sat out both that year's NCAA and NIT tournaments due to the self-imposed postseason ban. The team had banned itself from post season play before the season started. Nonetheless, over the course of the season the team had earned a three seed and a first round bye in the 2003 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament, but was upset in the second round by Indiana. At the conclusion of the season, the NCAA added a second year of post season ineligibility to bring the severity of the punishment to a level it deemed more appropriate. Amaker's 2003–04 team earned a fifth seed and first round bye in the 2004 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament where it defeated fourth-seeded Iowa before losing to top-seeded Illinois. The team experienced successive wins in the 2004 National Invitation Tournament against , , Hawaii and . The team won the championship game against , giving Amaker his highest single-season victory total up to that point in time with a 23–11 record. Amaker, who has tended to avoid the spotlight, was not on the court as his team celebrated the college basketball tradition of cutting of the nets in celebration of a championship at the 2004 NIT. The 2004–05 team only achieved a nine seed in the 2005 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament when it lost in the first round to eighth-seeded . It posted a 13–18 record (4–12 in conference) and finished ninth in the conference. The Wolverines' 2005–06 team was a high percentage shooting, disciplined and balanced team. It was seeded seventh in the 2006 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament but lost to the tenth seeded Minnesota Golden Gophers. The team had been ranked 37th in the Ratings Percentage Index prior to the game, making them a solid contender for an 2006 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament invitation. The loss sent them to the 2006 National Invitation Tournament where they were a number one seed, and they finished as the runner-up to South Carolina. Along the way to its runner-up finish, the team defeated ninth-seeded , fifth-seeded (2OT), third-seeded and fifth-seeded . The team ended with a 22–11 (8–8) record. Michigan's 2006–07 team earned an eight seed in the 2007 Big Ten Conference men's basketball tournament, when it defeated the ninth-seeded Minnesota Golden Gophers before succumbing to top-seeded Ohio State. After receiving a three seed, Michigan advanced to the second round of the 2007 National Invitation Tournament by beating before falling to . The team finished with a 22–13 record yet only 8–8 in conference play. Amaker was credited for helping to restore the ethical reputation of a Michigan program which had been tarnished by scandal. However, he was criticized in the press for being unable to take the Wolverines to the NCAA tournament in six seasons at the helm. Some fans and sportswriters argued that Amaker's Michigan teams tended to underachieve and fall apart in pressure situations, particularly in conference, on the road and at the end of the regular season. On March 17, 2007, Amaker was fired by the University of Michigan. Amaker was paid \$900,000 to buy out the remaining years on his contract. ### Harvard On April 11, 2007, Amaker was named head men's basketball coach at Harvard University. Harvard's recruiting process had included interviewing the underclassmen on the team who preferred Amaker to alternatives that included Mike Jarvis and Mike Gillian. Upon his arrival, Harvard had endured five consecutive non-winning seasons, a streak that Amaker would not halt until his third year. Amaker became the only African American among the head coaches of Harvard's 32 athletic teams. Amaker's Harvard team beat his former team, Michigan, in his eighth game as coach at Harvard during the 2007–08 season. It was the school's first win ever against a BCS conference school. The New York Times published an accusatory article in March 2008, raising allegations of diminished academic standards among Amaker's first class of recruits and potentially improper recruiting practices. Prodded by this negative publicity, the Ivy League office conducted a four-month investigation and "determined that no violations of NCAA or Ivy League rules occurred", clearing Amaker and his staff completely. Typically, the NCAA would accept the results of a formal investigation performed by a conference office but, in this case, the NCAA initially tabled and then eventually rejected the Ivy League's findings completely. The NCAA commenced its own investigation which ultimately took two years to complete. Amaker's Harvard squad defeated then-ranked Boston College (#17 AP Poll – \#24 Coaches' Poll) on January 7, 2009 for the first win over a ranked team in the program's history. His 2008–09 recruiting class was the first time an Ivy League institution was ranked in the top 25 by ESPN. The following season, the 2009–10 Harvard team played competitively against \#14 ranked Connecticut getting 30 points and 9 rebounds from senior Jeremy Lin on December 6. Although they held the lead only once, they were within 4 points in the final seconds of the game. They also won their December 9 rematch with Boston College by a 74–67 margin. After coaching Harvard to its highest single-season win total ever behind the play of Lin, Harvard was invited to participate in the 2010 CollegeInsider.com Tournament. The team was defeated in the first round by Appalachian State. During the season, Amaker was a nominee for the first Ben Jobe Award as the top minority Division I college basketball coach, and was recognized by Fox Sports as the 2010 Ivy League Coach of the Year. Amaker was mentioned for the 2010 head coach opening at St. John's. In the summer of 2010, the NCAA informed Harvard that Amaker's behavior constituted impermissible recruiting behavior. Harvard and the NCAA negotiated a settlement in which the university would "declare" what the NCAA consented to classify as secondary violations. Under the terms of the agreement, Harvard accepted punitive recruiting restrictions for the 2010–11 season. These were the first NCAA penalties ever assessed against the Harvard men's basketball program and the first instance of the Ivy League being overruled on a formal rules interpretation. Under Amaker's leadership, the 2010–11 team tied with Princeton for the 2010–11 Ivy League men's basketball season championship, which was the school's first men's basketball Ivy League championship since the league was formed in the 1956–57 season. Harvard finished the season a perfect 14–0 at home, which surpassed the prior season's school record of 11 home wins. Harvard's 12 conference game wins established a school record. The team's victory over Colorado was the Crimson's first against a Big 12 Conference opponent since that conference commenced play in 1996. His fourth season also marked the fourth straight season that Harvard defeated at least one power conference opponent. Although Harvard never appeared in the 2010–11 NCAA Division I men's basketball rankings, for a few weeks during the season they received a vote in the AP Poll. On March 7, Harvard received a vote in both the AP Poll and the Coaches' Poll. Harvard faced Ivy League co-champion Princeton in a one-game playoff and lost by a 63–62 margin. Princeton earned the 2011 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament automatic bid, while Harvard earned an at-large bid to the 2011 National Invitation Tournament, marking the school's first appearance in the National Invitation Tournament. On March 15, Harvard was defeated by by a 71–54 margin in the first round. The final record of 23–7 established a school record for number of wins, surpassing the prior season's total of 21. Amaker was again a finalist for the Ben Jobe Award, was a finalist for the Hugh Durham Award and was selected by the NABC as the District 13 Coach of the Year. He was named Ivy League coach of the year by Collegeinsider.com. The 2011–12 Harvard team defeated then-ranked Florida State (#22 AP Poll – \#20 Coaches' Poll) on November 25, 2011 for the school's second win over a ranked team in the program's history, and the highest ranked opponent in the Coaches' Poll that Harvard had defeated up to that point. On December 5, 2011, Harvard made its first appearance in either the AP Poll (25) or Coaches' Poll (24). It left Brown as the only remaining Ivy League school to have never been ranked in the AP Poll and leaves only seven schools that have played Division I basketball since the AP Poll began that have never been ranked in it. Harvard was the first Ivy League team ranked in the Coaches' Poll since the 2009–10 Cornell Big Red and the first Ivy League team ranked in the AP Poll since the 1997–98 Princeton Tigers, who finished 8th in the poll. By January 2, the team achieved rankings of 22 in the AP Poll and 21 in the Coaches' Poll. The team was also ranked 21st in the Coaches' Poll on February 6. The team established a new record for single-season wins as well as single-season non-league wins and tied the record for conference game wins. Amaker was selected by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association as the 2011–12 Men's District I (ME, VT, NH, RI, MA, CT) Coach of the Year. He won the NABC Coach of the Year for District 13 and was again a finalist for both the Ben Jobe Award and the Hugh Durham Award. On March 6, 2012, Harvard earned its first bid to the NCAA tournament since 1946. On October 6, 2012, Amaker was inducted into his high school's inaugural hall of fame class. Amaker's 2012–13 Harvard team entered the season affected by the 2012 Harvard cheating scandal. Instead of being the favorite as originally expected, the team was predicted to finish second to Princeton by various media sources because Kyle Casey and Brandyn Curry withdrew due to the scandal. Casey and Curry had been first-team and second-team All-Ivy selections for the 2011–12 Ivy League men's basketball season, respectively. Both players withdrew in hopes of preserving their final year of athletic eligibility following the investigation. During the season, the team defeated Boston College its fifth consecutive victory against Boston College Eagles men's basketball, making Amaker a perfect 6–0 against the Atlantic Coast Conference. The 2012–13 Harvard team overcame the withdrawal of its senior co-captains to repeat as 2013 Ivy League champions, which earned Harvard a trip to the 2013 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. On March 21, 14th-seeded Harvard earned the school's first NCAA tournament victory by a 68–62 margin and its first victory over a top 10 opponent when it defeated 3rd-seeded New Mexico (#10 AP Poll – \#10 Coaches' Poll). Two nights later, Harvard lost to Arizona 74–51. Following the season, Amaker was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2013. Amaker won the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association (NSSA) Clarence "Big House" Gaines College Basketball Coach of the Year in Division I as the top minority coach, the NABC Coach of the Year for District 13 and was again a finalist for the Ben Jobe Award. In August, Amaker was inducted into his fourth Hall of Fame (Washington Metro Basketball Hall of Fame). The 2013–14 team won the 2013 Great Alaska Shootout and 2013–14 Ivy League conference regular season championship with a 13–1 record and posting a school record 27 wins against 5 defeats. The team entered the 2014 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament with a number twelve seed where it defeated a (#15 AP Poll – \#14 Coaches' Poll) Cincinnati team that was seeded fifth. Harvard eventually lost to number (#11/13) four seed Michigan State. The team was the first Ivy League school to win games in consecutive NCAA Division I men's basketball tournaments since the 1983–84 Princeton Tigers. The 2014–15 team was the first Ivy League team to make a fifth consecutive postseason appearance since the 2001–02 Princeton Tigers men's basketball team completed a seven-year run for Princeton. They were the third Ivy team to make four consecutive NCAA basketball tournament appearances, a feat last accomplished by the 1991–92 Princeton Tigers men's basketball team. On December 7, 2016, in a rivalry contest against Boston College, Amaker earned his 179th win with the 2016–17 team, surpassing Frank Sullivan as Harvard's all-time winningest coach. Amaker led the 2017–18 Harvard Crimson to a share of the 2017–18 Ivy League men's basketball season regular season title. The team reached the championship game of the 2018 Ivy League men's basketball tournament, but lost to Penn earning an automatic bid to the 2018 National Invitation Tournament. In addition to his coaching duties at Harvard, Amaker served as a Special Assistant to Harvard University President Larry Bacow and a Spring 2021 Fellow at the Hauser Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In February 2021, he was named as a Champion of Diversity by the NCAA. ## Personal life Amaker is married to Stephanie Pinder-Amaker, who is a licensed clinical psychologist. The couple met at Duke. Amaker's grandmother is Annie Deskins. Amaker's mother, Alma, continued to make him the sauce for his favorite meal of spaghetti and express mail it to him from her home in Falls Church, Virginia, during his career at least until his days at Michigan. According to Duke teammate Bilas, Amaker was quite fashion-conscious and attempted to be a trendsetter. At Michigan, his daily routine included breakfast at a local hotel where he read USA Today. At Harvard, once a month, he convenes The Breakfast Club at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, restaurant Henrietta's Table with a group of noted African-American scholars and businessmen led by Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree to discuss sociopolitical issues. Amaker is known for his trademark mock turtleneck shirts, each of which has his initials monogrammed into the collar, and for wearing a sports coat at each news conference. Unlike most of his peers, Amaker avoids the press and will not do a radio or television show. Amaker was enshrined in the Duke Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001. He was a member of the board of directors for USA Basketball. During his time on the board he served as a member of the Men's Collegiate and Men's Senior National Committees, where he helped select members of the United States 1996 Olympic gold medal team. Amaker owns two vintage Mercedes-Benz cars, which were featured in an article in The Star Magazine, and is a Washington Commanders fan. ## Head coaching record

Operation Grandslam

1962–1963 UN offensive in the Congo

Operation Grandslam was an offensive undertaken by United Nations peacekeeping forces from 28 December 1962 to 15 January 1963 against the forces of the State of Katanga, a secessionist state rebelling against the Republic of the Congo in central Africa. The Katangese forces were decisively defeated and Katanga was forcibly reintegrated into the Congo. The United Nations had tried several times to reconcile the government of the Congo with the State of Katanga, which had declared independence under Moïse Tshombe with Belgian support in 1960. Though initially limiting its actions, the United Nations Operation in the Congo became increasingly impatient towards Katanga and Tshombe, drawing up plans to resolve the situation through force. Tshombe continuously violated agreements he had made with the United Nations and the Congolese government by building up his forces and bringing foreign mercenaries into the conflict. The situation reached a breaking point in December 1962 when Katangese gendarmes attacked peacekeeping forces in Katanga. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant authorised a retaliatory offensive to eliminate secessionist opposition. Reinforced by aircraft from Sweden, United Nations peacekeepers completed the first phase of the operation, securing the Katangese capital, Élisabethville and destroying much of the Katangese Air Force by the end of the year. In early January, the United Nations forces turned their attention towards remaining strongholds in southern Katanga. Indian peacekeepers exceeded their orders and crossed the Lufira River ahead of schedule, generating panic behind the Katangese lines and embarrassing the United Nations leadership. Tshombe, realising that his position was untenable, approached Thant for peace. On 17 January 1963, he signed an instrument of surrender and declared the Katangese secession to be over. The central government reorganised the provincial administration of Katanga to weaken its political structure. Tshombe initially participated but feared his arrest and fled to Europe. Many Katangese gendarmes and their mercenary leaders took refuge in Angola to reorganise, acting under orders from Tshombe. In 1964, Tshombe was welcomed back to the Congo and made Prime Minister. He immediately called on his forces to suppress communist revolts in the east and centre of the country. This they accomplished but Tshombe was dismissed from his post in 1965, ultimately losing all contact with them following his imprisonment in Algeria in 1967. Relations between the new central government and the gendarmes soured and, after a mutiny was repressed, they returned to Angola. An insurgency for Katangese secession continues to the present day. ## Background ### Katanga's secession Following the Republic of the Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, the country fell into disorder as the army mutinied. Shortly thereafter South Kasai and the State of Katanga declared independence from the Congolese government. The latter contained the vast majority of the Congo's valuable mineral resources and attracted significant mining activity under Belgian rule. Many Katangese thought that they were entitled to the revenue generated through the lucrative industry, and feared that under the new central government it would be distributed among the Congo's poorer provinces. Resulting nativist politics with support from the Belgian government and private interests such as the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) precipitated the Katangese secession. The deposition—and eventual murder—of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba caused further issues in the country, leading to the declaration of a rival government in Stanleyville by the end of the year. To prevent a complete collapse of order within the country, the United Nations established a major peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Operation in the Congo (known under its French acronym as ONUC). In addition to a large body of troops (20,000 at its peak strength), a civilian mission was brought in to provide technical assistance to the Congolese government. Initially, ONUC limited its actions to ensuring the safety of Congolese citizens and foreign nationals and refrained from acting against the secessionist states, but the UN ran into trouble in Katanga. The state's leader and head of the locally entrenched Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga (CONAKAT), Moïse Tshombe, at first banned the UN from entering his territory and then greatly limited their peacekeeping efforts. Further issues derived from peacekeepers' attempts to deport foreign mercenaries, many of whom were employed by Katanga. ### United Nations response On 21 February 1961 the UN Security Council passed a resolution permitting ONUC to use military force to prevent civil war, make arrests, halt military operations, arrange ceasefires and deport foreign military personnel. Under the authorisation of this resolution, UN forces launched Operation Rumpunch and Operation Morthor (sometimes referred to as "Round One" of UN-Katangese conflict) with the aim of securing their own positions in Katanga and eliminating the presence of mercenaries. The former, though limited in scope, was largely successful, but the latter failed to achieve its objectives. As Morthor was underway, Special Representative Conor Cruise O'Brien announced, "The secession of Katanga has ended." This statement was quickly realised to be premature; Katanga fought the offensive to a stalemate. United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld attempted to meet Tshombe for negotiations in Northern Rhodesia, but on the night of 17 September his plane crashed, killing all aboard. Hammarskjöld's untimely death, combined with an overall rise in tensions, helped rally international support for a more robust peacekeeping approach. His replacement, U Thant, was less averse to using military force in the Congo and believed that the UN should intervene in internal Congolese affairs. Thant promptly requested that the Security Council grant ONUC a stronger mandate. This came in the form of a resolution on 24 November, which maintained the goals of previous ONUC resolutions and cleared up any remaining ambiguities surrounding the role and nature of the UN's intervention. It reaffirmed ONUC's ability to detain and deport foreign military personnel and mercenaries with force, described Katanga's secessionist activities as illegal, and declared the UN's support for the central government of the Congo in its efforts to "maintain law and order and national integrity". Tshombe immediately responded to the resolution by broadcasting an inflammatory speech against ONUC. This was followed by the assault of two UN officials and the murder of two Indian soldiers at the hands of the Katangese Gendarmerie. In turn ONUC's command structure in Katanga, mindful of the new mandate, issued instructions to UN troops to put "an end to Katangese resistance to UN policy by destruction of Gendarmerie and other anti-UN resistance." ### Escalation In December 1961, the UN initiated Operation Unokat (dubbed "Round Two") to ensure ONUC personnel's freedom of movement and reassert their authority in Katanga. Under military pressure, Tshombe was forced to enter serious negotiations with Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula. On 21 December 1961 Tshombe signed the Kitona Declaration, an agreement whereby he would recognise the authority of the central government and work to reintegrate Katanga into the Republic. However, Tshombe subsequently deferred to the Katangese Parliament and put off any action of reconciliation. In January 1962 the Stanleyville government was finally subdued and the UN was able to refocus its efforts on ending the Katangese secession. By then, contact between the central government and Katanga had broken down and ONUC intelligence reports indicated that the latter was rebuilding its forces. In August 1962 Thant proposed a "Plan for National Reconciliation" by which Katanga would rejoin a federalised Congo. Adoula and Tshombe both accepted the proposal. Thant was wary of Tshombe's delaying tactics and applied increasing political pressure on the Katangese government to abide by the plan's timetable. Belgian support for Katanga waned as the secession dragged on and the possibility of conflict increased, jeopardising investors' mining interests. The outbreak of the Sino-Indian War in October raised the potential of all Indian troops being withdrawn from ONUC, putting pressure on UN officials to quickly resolve the secession. The United States government, which had underwritten most of the costs of ONUC, also began pushing for a conclusion, having determined that the operation was financially unsustainable. Still doubting the likelihood of a peaceful resolution, Thant sent Special Representative Ralph Bunche to Léopoldville, the capital of the Congo. There, Bunche worked with Officer-in-Charge of ONUC Robert K. A. Gardiner and UN Force Commander Sean MacEoin to create a plan to achieve freedom of movement for ONUC personnel and eliminate the foreign mercenaries. By then it was obvious to ONUC that Tshombe did not intend on rejoining the Congo; there were 300 to 500 mercenaries in Katanga (as many as there had been before previous UN operations) and new airfields and defensive positions were being constructed. ONUC personnel and even diplomatic staff faced increasing harassment from Katangese gendarmes. Katangese jets were also attacking ONUC and central government forces, in effect waging civil war. Tshombe was fully aware of the military contingency operation and accused the UN of searching for a pretext to use force against Katanga. On 27 November the United States and Belgium issued a joint statement, announcing that Thant's plan had failed and calling for increased economic pressure on Katanga. On 10 December Gardiner announced that the UN would take economic measures against Katanga. He wrote a letter to Tshombe, accusing Katanga of failing to institute the Plan for National Reconciliation's provisions or otherwise end its secession. He also demanded that Katangese forces cease military action in northern Katanga, end their supply blockade against UN troops at Sakania, and release detained Tunisian peacekeepers. The letter stated that the UN "would take no offensive military action", but would respond greatly to an attack and take measures deemed necessary to prevent further attacks. The following day Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak declared that the Belgian government would support the UN or the Congolese government should either one end the Katangese secession through force. He then denounced Tshombe as a "rebel". The United States Department of Defense shortly thereafter dispatched a team to the Congo to evaluate the UN's material requirements for carrying out an offensive and offered military intelligence aid to ONUC. The Katangese responded by organising anti-American demonstrations in Élisabethville. ## Prelude At 10:00 on 24 December 1962, Katangese forces in Élisabethville and along Avenue Tombeur attacked Ethiopian peacekeepers with small arms fire, wounding one. The shooting lasted five hours. The UN maintained that the Ethiopians held their fire, but an Associated Press correspondent reported that they responded with a recoilless rifle. At 11:00 gendarmes shot down an unarmed ONUC helicopter. An Indian member of the crew was mortally wounded while the rest were captured and beaten. A group of ONUC officers was later able to recover the prisoners without incident. Occasional fire continued the next day, and Katangese Foreign Minister Évariste Kimba promised it would cease. The situation was calm in Élisabethville on 26 December, but on 27 December the gendarmes resumed their sporadic fire against UN positions and by the late evening peacekeepers were under attack from roadblocks around the golf course and along Jadotville Road. In reaction to the increasing Katangese hostility, the ONUC Air Division issued Fighter Operations Order 16, directing UN aircraft to retaliate against Katangese aircraft mounting any attack (including against non-UN targets) and to shoot down any others deemed to be carrying "visible offensive weapons, such as bombs or rockets". Tshombe sent a letter to UN representative Eliud Mathu, accusing the peacekeepers of having obstructed the passage of Katangese government ministers on 24 December and engaging in "a general plan" of military operations. Mathu responded by saying that the ministers' movements had been restricted only to ensure their presence so they could order the gendarmes to back down and mediate the release of the helicopter crew. Mathu proceeded to invite Tshombe to his house so he could be brought to a scene of conflict and see what was occurring. Tshombe agreed, and peacekeepers escorted him to the front lines where he agreed that his own forces were attacking UN positions without provocation. After the tour, Tshombe returned to his residence. Though he initially proclaimed his intent to end the fighting, he went into an adjacent room and telephoned the Katangese forces in Kolwezi. Speaking in Kiswahili, he instructed the Katangese Air Force to raid UN positions. Radio intercepts also revealed to the UN that General Norbert Muke, the commander of the Katangese Gendarmerie, had ordered the air force to bomb the Élisabethville airport on the night of 29 December. With the failure to enact a ceasefire, Major General Dewan Prem Chand of India convinced Thant to authorise a strong, decisive offensive to pre-emptively eliminate Katangese forces. This brought relief to some of the UN peacekeepers, mindful that they now had justification to act forcefully against Katanga. Determined to avoid civilian casualties and widespread destruction, the secretary-general sent a wire to the UN Force Commander in the Congo to explain that napalm was to be prohibited from use in combat. In a final attempt to prevent further conflict, Mathu presented Tshombe a document at 11:30 on 28 December for his signature. It stipulated the removal of Katangese roadblocks and the cessation of attacks. Tshombe said he could not sign it without the consent of his ministers and left the meeting. The UN subsequently announced that it would take action to remove the roadblocks on its own. For unknown reasons, Tshombe quietly departed Élisabethville. ## Opposing forces ### Katanga In addition to the 300 to 500 mercenaries, Katanga had approximately 14,000 to 17,000 gendarmes in its service, of whom around 7,000 had not received military training. Through reconnaissance, the UN had learned that these forces were concentrated on defending the southern tier of the province (much of the north was already under central government control), with about 5,150 troops in and around the towns of Jadotville, Kolwezi and Bunkeya. Another 2,000 garrisoned Élisabethville. The UN also estimated that the Katangese Air Force possessed a number of Harvards, Magisters and de Havilland Vampires, amounting to a dozen combat aircraft, as well as some other transport aircraft and small planes. However, they believed that many Katangese aircraft were unserviceable. ONUC intelligence observed limited stockpiles of ammunition, petroleum, oil and lubricants at a few airfields. ### ONUC ONUC forces in Katanga were under the command of Major General Chand and his operational deputy, Brigadier Reginald Noronha. ONUC force strength had been raised to 18,200, 70 per cent of whom were deployed in and around Katanga. Peacekeeping contingents from Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Ireland, Sweden and Tunisia were earmarked by the UN to carry out Operation Grandslam. In order to simultaneously deploy these troops for the operation, the UN required a large airlift capability. ONUC had amassed an air transport fleet of 65 planes, the largest being Douglas DC-4s, but it was still insufficient for Operation Grandslam. Thant's military attaché, Indar Jit Rikhye, had requested assistance from the United States Department of Defense. Several days later, the United States committed its air force to provide logistical support. In November United States President John F. Kennedy offered to supply the UN with American fighter jets to exert an "overwhelming show of strength from the air". Thant, though desiring forceful UN ground and air action, was eager to keep ONUC impartial and wanted to refrain from calling on too much support from any major world powers. On 16 December he declared that he would consider the American offer if the situation remained deadlocked by the spring of 1963. The need for combat aircraft was long-standing a problem for ONUC, which had been delaying the commencement of the operation until sufficient air strength had been amassed to conduct a single attack that could destroy the Katangese Air Force. It was feared that a limited attack would fail to eliminate all Katangese aircraft and stretch their own forces thin, thereby allowing Katanga to disperse its air forces among hidden airfields and launch retaliatory attacks on Kamina Air Base. India had withdrawn its Canberra bombers in October to guard against China, and Ethiopia repatriated its force of Sabres after one was lost in an accident. However, new air surveillance radar equipment was deployed in Kamina and Élisabethville. The ONUC Air Division was bolstered in November by the delivery of two Saab 29 Tunnan (J 29) reconnaissance-variant jets from Sweden, greatly enhancing the force's intelligence capabilities. This was followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of several Swedish J 29 combat aircraft and a 380-strong anti-aircraft unit from Norway. In all, the UN would field 10 combat J 29s in the operation. ## Operation ### Plan Operation Grandslam was planned to include three phases, but was successfully completed in two. The first phase was designed to "restore the security of ONUC troops in the Élisabethville area and their freedom of movement by clearing the gendarmerie road-blocks from which fire had been directed at United Nations troops." The second phase would involve advances into Jadotville and Kolwezi to arrest foreign mercenaries. The third phase was designed to deal with the mercenaries in Kamina. ### First phase Operation Grandslam commenced in the mid-afternoon on 28 December 1962 after Thant's ultimatum that the gendarmerie back down by 15:00 went unanswered, kicking off "Round Three" of the fighting in Katanga. The initial attacks triggered the flight of 50,000 refugees, many towards the Rhodesian border, though most would quickly return. In the first day, UN forces killed 50 Katangese gendarmes before securing downtown Élisabethville, the local Gendarmerie headquarters, the radio station, and Tshombe's presidential palace. Early on 29 December, the ONUC Air Division launched a surprise assault on the Kolwezi airfield. The J 29 fighter jets strafed with their 20mm cannons, as their 13.5mm rockets were inoperable in the overcast skies. Five fuel dumps and the local administrative building were destroyed. To prevent civilian casualties, ONUC did not target the Kolwezi civilian airport. Katangese Air Force Commander Jeremiah Puren had, however, managed to evacuate six Harvard trainers before the attack occurred. Mercenary Jan Zumbach remained with the other portion of the air force in Portuguese Angola and did not intervene, infuriating Puren, who was ordered by General Muke to fall back to Jadotville. For the rest of the campaign most of the Katangese Air Force remained grounded, as Puren feared his Harvards would perform poorly against the UN's faster J 29 jets. Anti-aircraft fire damaged three UN planes at Kolwezi, but their attacks nonetheless continued throughout the day and were extended to other Katangese airfields, such as those at Kamatanda and Ngule. Three further UN reconnaissance missions resulted in the destruction of six Katangese aircraft on the ground and one further kill, possibly in the air. According to the UN, the air raids against the Kantangese Air Force were completed "without loss of life" on either side. Destroying so much of the Katangese Air Force at the onset of the operation was key for the UN to succeed; if Katanga were able to launch coordinated air attacks against UN supply airlifts, Grandslam would likely fail. At midday Ethiopian units advanced down the Kipushi road to sever the Katangese lines to Rhodesia. Gendarmes were well positioned in wooded heights overlooking the route, but following heavy mortar bombardment they surrendered with little opposition. Irish troops, detailed for the purpose because they spoke English and could communicate with Rhodesian border guards, then passed through at night and seized the town of Kipushi without facing any resistance. Gardiner, holding a press conference on the matter in Léopoldville, jubilantly declared, "[W]e are not going to make the mistake of stopping short this time. This is going to be as decisive as we can make it." Tshombe ordered his troops to offer determined resistance to ONUC and threatened to have bridges and dams blown up if the operation was not halted within 24 hours. By 30 December, all the objectives for the first phase of Operation Grandslam had been accomplished. Major General Chand received a congratulatory telegram from Thant for the progress of UN forces. ONUC jet strafing and rocket attacks ended the following day, having successfully eliminated most of the Katangese Air Force. ### Second phase Pleased with the success of operations in Élisabethville, Chand decided to immediately carry forward with the UN's plans. In the afternoon of 30 December the commander of the Swedish battalion at Kamina Air Base, Överstelöjtnant Bengt Fredman, received orders to advance upon the gendarmerie encampments in Kamina early the following morning. The gendarmes had expected an attack on 30 December, but when one failed to occur they began to drink beer and fire flares at random, possibly to boost morale. Rogue bands of gendarmes subsequently conducted random raids around the city and looted the local bank. Swedish and Ghanaian troops were ordered out of Kamina Air Base the following morning at 05:20. By 06:00 they were advancing down the main road towards the town of Kamina (dubbed Kamina-ville), while a detached Swedish company took back roads to the city through Kiavie. At 06:20 the company spearheading the advance came under heavy machine gun and mortar fire from the Katangese two or three kilometres northeast of Kamina and was ordered by Major Sture Fagerström to retreat 600 meters. The Swedes took cover and regrouped while Fredman organised an armoured car unit. He arrived at the front lines at 07:05 and the peacekeepers began their attack. Supported with mortars, a combat patrol advanced down the road and by 07:55 it had broken through the gendarmerie's defences. Swedish medics attended to the wounded Katangese that were left behind while the rest of the forces began entering the city. The Katangese Gendamerie conducted a disorganised withdrawal to two camps southeast of Kamina. Shortly after the 09:00 the Swedish battalion reached the city center. Patrols slowly mopped up resistance and took several prisoners. J 29 jets flew low to the ground to intimidate the remaining gendarmes and were hit by small arms fire in return. At 09:55 the Swedish troops attacked the nearest gendarmerie camp, encountering only sporadic resistance. At 13:00 they secured the second camp unopposed, as the remaining Katangese had fled. The Swedes commandeered it and began working with municipal authorities to stabilise the local situation. Sustaining no casualties, the Swedish battalion seized about 40 vehicles, two armoured cars, a Bofors 40 mm gun, a recoilless rifle, several heavy machine guns, tons of ammunition, and a large amount of supplies. The same day the 4th Battalion, Madras Regiment and members of the Rajputana Rifles (both part of the 99th Indian Infantry Brigade) moved out of Élisabethville for the Lufira River. Late that night a company of the Rajputana Rifles encountered entrenched gendarmes and mercenaries along Jadotville Road and a gunfight ensued. By the time firing ceased at 03:00 on 1 January 1963, four peacekeepers had been killed and 19 wounded. Two captured mercenaries revealed that confusion and desertion were occurring among the Katangese forces. Altogether the Indian forces faced unexpectedly light resistance and reached the east bank of the Lufira on 3 January. The main bridge over the Lufira to Jadotville had been destroyed after the local mercenary commander blew up a truck parked halfway across it. UN forces bombarded the far side of the river with sporadic mortar fire. Though the shelling was mostly ineffectual, the mercenaries were unnerved by low-flying jets and withdrew to Jadotville after putting up minimal resistance. Meanwhile, UN troops stopped at the river bank to await the arrival of American bridging equipment, until they discovered a sabotaged rail bridge 7 miles (11 km) upstream that was still passable on foot. Brigadier Noronha, acting as the local commander, ordered the bridge to be secured. The Rajputana infantry crossed the bridge and swiftly neutralised Katangese opposition on the far side of the river. Meanwhile, the Madras battalion located a raft and, with the assistance of a Sikorsky helicopter, brought over most of their vehicles and heavy equipment. Not wanting to remain at an exposed bridgehead, Noronha had his troops occupy Jadotville. General Muke had attempted to organise a defence of the town, but Katangese forces were in disarray, being completely caught off-guard by the UN troops' advance. The Indian soldiers faced no resistance and were warmly welcomed by the local inhabitants and UMHK mining staff. Only when Noronha was in the town did he contact the UN headquarters in Léopoldville. UN forces briefly stayed in Jadotville to regroup before advancing on Kolwezi, Sakania and Dilolo. Between 31 December 1962 and 4 January 1963, UN jets were only used for reconnaissance and providing cover to ground forces. By 4 January, the ONUC Air Division had conducted 76 air sorties, while patrolling by the J 29 jets had cut off Katanga from support in Angola and Southern Africa. Meanwhile, international opinion rallied in favour of ONUC. Belgium and France strongly urged Tshombe to accept Thant's Plan for National Reconciliation and resolve the conflict. Two days the later United States Air Force flew amphibious troop-carriers and armoured vehicles into Élisabethville. The 99th Indian Brigade had been waiting for their arrival, as the equipment was necessary in order to cross the dozen rivers and streams between Jadotville and Kolwezi. The troops began their advance three days later, but faced armed opposition and struggled to navigate the troop carriers through strong currents. On 8 January, Tshombe reappeared in Élisabethville. The same day Prime Minister Adoula received a letter from the chiefs of the most prominent Kantangese tribes pledging allegiance to the Congolese government and calling for Tshombe's arrest. Thant, at the urging of the United States, considered making contact with Tshombe to negotiate. Bunche advised against this, saying to the secretary-general, "[Tshombe] is maneuvering in every possible way to get some recognition. His position, after all, is only that of a provincial president, and now, for the first time, he is reduced to size. He should be kept there." He shortly thereafter clarified his opinion, stating, "If we could convince [Tshombe] that there is no more room for maneuvering and bargaining, and no one to bargain with, he would surrender and the gendarmerie would collapse." The following day Tshombe was briefly detained by UN soldiers, but he was released so he could meet with his minister of interior, Godefroid Munongo, and several of his other cabinet officials in Mokambo. It was alleged that along the way Tshombe urged his supporters to resist UN forces, but, regardless, Mokambo and Bakania were soon occupied. He expressed his willingness to negotiate with the central government, but warned that any advance on Kolwezi would result in the enactment of a scorched earth policy. In accordance with the threat, the Delcommune and Le Marinel dams were prepared for demolition. On 10 January, UN troops seized an abandoned gendarmerie base and secured Shinkolobwe. Tshombe fled to Northern Rhodesia on a Rhodesian Air Force plane. Adoula and many ONUC officials were determined to keep him out of the country, but he managed to reach Kolwezi, the only significant location that remained under Katangese control. Outside of the city several French mercenaries were skirmishing with UN troops when one patrol accidentally drove their jeep into a ditch. Nearby Indian Gurkhas believed them to be Swedish peacekeepers and helped them retrieve their vehicle. One of the mercenaries then spoke in French and the Indians realised their mistake. A firefight ensued in which all but one of the mercenaries, desperate to avoid capture, escaped. On 12 January Fredman's battalion surprised two gendarmerie battalions in Kabundji. The Swedes seized their weapons and directed them to return to their civilian livelihoods. Meanwhile, mercenaries in the Kolwezi area had taken Tshombe's threats about a scorched earth policy seriously and had planted explosives on all nearby bridges, the Nzilo Dam (which provided most of Katanga's electricity) and most of the UMHK mining facilities. When Tshombe arrived on 12 January, he was informed by UMHK officials that they had negotiated a tax deal with the central government and were withdrawing their support for secession. They asked him to not spread the news, fearing the mercenaries would feel betrayed and destroy their facilities as revenge. Realising in a final meeting in Kolwezi that the situation was grim, Colonel Bob Denard suggested that, before fleeing, the mercenaries should destroy the Nzilo Dam to make a political statement. Tshombe, knowing that the UMHK would disapprove, told him that such an action would be "criminally irresponsible." Company representatives met with Brigadier General Noronha to discuss the best way for UN troops to enter Kolwezi without causing collateral damage. General Muke vainly attempted to organise the 140 mercenaries and 2,000 gendarmes under his command to prepare a final defence of the city. His efforts, undermined by the force's low morale and indiscipline, were further hampered by an influx of refugees. Discipline in the garrison increasingly faltered; in once instance, two mercenaries attempted to steal Puren's jeep. Tshombe ordered the Katangese garrison of Baudouinville to surrender to besieging UN and Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC) forces. Instead, they and most of the population deserted the city while a handful of gendarmes near Kongolo laid down their arms to Nigerian and Malaysian soldiers. On 14 January, Indian troops found the last intact bridge into Kolwezi. After a brief fight with gendarmes and mercenaries they secured it and crossed over, stopping at the city outskirts to await further instruction. On 15 January, Tshombe sent a formal message to Thant, "I am ready to proclaim immediately before the world that the Katanga's secession is ended." Munongo fled Kolwezi and angrily declared that he would continue the campaign from Rhodesia, though he soon returned. Tshombe offered to return to Élisabethville to oversee the implementation of Thant's proposal for reunification if Prime Minister Adoula granted amnesty to himself and his government. At a press conference, Adoula accepted Tshombe's proposition and announced that what remained of the Katangese Gendarmerie would be integrated into the ANC. ## Aftermath and analyses ### Katangese surrender On 17 January, forward elements of the 99th Brigade reached the Tshilongo River where they were ordered to halt. Late that afternoon, Tshombe and Munongo met with UN officials in Élisabethville to finalise negotiations. They concluded with Tshombe signing a formal instrument of surrender with Major General Chand and acting UN Civilian Chief George Sherry, officially ending the Katangese secession. Four days later he peacefully received UN troops in Kolwezi led by Brigadier Noronha. Thant sent a congratulatory message to the peacekeeping forces, declaring that the conflict had been "forced upon [them]", adding that "it was only after all other efforts failed that the order was given to undertake defensive action of removing the hostile gendarmerie roadblocks which has now been completed so successfully and fortunately with a minimum of casualties." All the various political concerns about what ramifications a UN attempt to crush the secession might cause, such as a drawn-out guerrilla war or power vacuum, were virtually resolved with the successful conclusion of Operation Grandslam. Most of the international community was satisfied with the result, including the United States, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. ### Military casualties and damage A total of either 10 or 11 UN peacekeepers were killed during the operation and between 27 and 77 were wounded. This relatively low casualty rate greatly relieved Thant and his advisers. Total statistics on Katangese Gendarmerie and mercenary casualties are unknown. A total of seven UN fighter aircraft and a single reconnaissance aircraft were damaged by fire from the ground. In return, the Katangese Air Force had lost almost a dozen of its Harvards, Magisters and de Havilland Vampires, most while on the ground. All Katangese combat aircraft, except for one or two Harvards, were recorded as destroyed by UN forces at the conclusion of Grandslam. General Christian Roy Kaldager, commander of the ONUC Air Force, later said of the Grandslam air campaign, "We are very proud of it—it is the best memory I take away from the Congo." A subsequent investigation by an ONUC intelligence team found that 15 aircraft had been hidden at Angolan airfields for use, in the words of captured Belgian mercenaries, "in the next fight for Katanga's secession". The operation also cut short a delivery of Cavalier Mustangs which Tshombe had purchased and had been expected to arrive sometime in January. The UN was also able to confirm that Katanga had been able to acquire their aircraft with the knowledge and assistance of the governments of Portuguese Angola, South Africa and Northern Rhodesia. ### Civilian casualties and alleged ONUC atrocities The UN was unable to confirm reports of civilian casualties from the operation, allowing themselves to avoid much embarrassment in the press. However, statistics are ultimately unknown. According to a 1966 report prepared for the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, two Belgian women were killed at a UN checkpoint at the outskirts of Jadotville by Indian peacekeepers after the male driver of the car they were in suddenly accelerated instead of stopping. The "unauthorised" shooting ostensibly "greatly embarrassed" UN officials. An American journalist in Katanga at the time also supported the assertion. After the operation, a local priest sent a letter to the UN in protest of "the flagrant breach by UN troops of international conventions sacred to all civilised nations." He claimed that on 29 December Irish troops had fired upon patients in a ward of the Élisabethville Union Minière hospital at close range and that Ethiopian troops had killed 70 persons whose bodies were delivered to Prince Leopold Hospital before the end of 1962. The allegations were supported by Charles J. Bauer of the United States National Catholic Welfare Council and Archbishop Joseph Cornelius of Brussels. Robert Gardiner refuted both accusations in an open letter to the vicar general of the Roman Catholic archbishopric in Élisabethville. Writing on the first charge, he said that Irish troops were not even in the area at the time. Instead, he detailed that Ethiopian soldiers had stormed the hospital compound after being subjected to heavy firing from Katangese gendarmes who had dug in there. Gardiner reported that the nun on duty had said some of the patients were wearing khaki clothing similar to the gendarmes' uniforms. He conceded that one patient was shot in the leg while another received a grazing wound. Gardiner also said no protests of the presence of gendarmes was ever forwarded to the International Red Cross and that the mother superior of the hospital testified that medical authorities had been advised by Union Minière officials to refrain from taking any action against the gendarmes and to avoid involving themselves in the matter altogether. As for the 70 corpses brought to Prince Leopold Hospital, Gardiner stated that "[n]o evidence has been produced to substantiate this allegation." ### ONUC communications breakdown The unexpected advance of the Indian forces under Brigadier Noronha into Jadotville on 3 January had created considerable international controversy and embarrassed Secretary-General Thant. Noronha had exceeded his initial orders by seizing a bridge and crossing over the Lufira River. Thant had guaranteed the British and the Belgians that such an advance would not occur, as both feared Tshombe would have UMHK property destroyed in retaliation. Ralphe Bunche had also given United States Secretary of State Dean Rusk and United States Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson II the impression that UN troops were not to undertake further action in Katanga without specific authorisation from Thant. ONUC commanders were apparently never informed of such assurances. The Americans consequentially believed that the Secretary-General had lost control over his forces. Bunche had sent a message to Gardiner, directing him to delay the UN advance until Tshombe's intentions could be clarified, but orders failed to reach Chand or Noronha through ONUC's out-dated communications system (the message was sent via commercial overland cable from Léopoldville). Gardiner trepidly responded by reporting the advance. Bunche then demanded an explanation as to why UN troops had supposedly disregarded Thant's orders. A UN spokesperson acknowledged that from a military perspective the operation had been "brilliantly executed" but stated that the UN regretted the "serious breakdown in effective communication and coordination between United Nations Headquarters and the Léopoldville office." The same day of the capture of Jadotville, Thant dispatched Bunche to the Congo to investigate the incident. Thant announced that Bunche's visit was for "a number of matters, political, military and administrative affecting the operation and its present and future activities," though his statement did little to disguise the reason for the trip from the international community. Upon his arrival in the country, Bunche read a hand-written statement to the press in which he assured them that the seizure of Jadotville was "part of the plan". Major General Chand was particularly anxious about Bunche's visit. Keenly aware of this, Bunche did his best to alleviate the general's worries, asking to stay at his residence in Élisabethville instead of a hotel. Chand was alarmed when Bunche presented him with a letter from Thant, but Bunche reached into his pocket and pulled out a suggested response. The general was surprised by the accuracy of the draft in its considerations of the military situation of UN troops during the advance, though the following day he gave Bunche a full explanation of what had occurred. In his official report on the events in Katanga, Bunche concluded, "I have found beyond doubt that it is our machinery that is at fault, far more than the individuals." He returned to UN Headquarters on 10 January with an official apology from ONUC commanders. Thant later commented on the matter, writing, "I felt that it was I, not they, who should have apologised for my miscalculation and apprehensions based on scare reports from London and Brussels." According to UN official Eric S. Packham, it was unofficially suggested that the Indian government, in direct communication with Chand and impatient with the UN's progress in Katanga, unilaterally ordered Noronha's troops to seize Jadotville. Others rumoured that Gardiner had quietly approved of the action, or that Chand had deliberately delayed the halt order by directing all radio equipment to be deactivated. ### Justification for the use of force At the time, the use of such robust force against Katanga, including aircraft, artillery and armoured vehicles, aroused much controversy. Though personally dismayed by the violence as a Buddhist, Thant thought the operation was justified. His reasoning for such strong action fell in line with just war theory. Proponents of Katanga argued that the secessionist movement was a legitimate exercise of self-determination. Thant refuted the idea in his memoirs, listing three primary objections: first, the Congo had been admitted into the UN in 1960 as a "unified state" with the written agreement of Tshombe. Second, "no sovereign state in the world ever recognised the independence of Katanga". Third, Tshombe's government was "never able to exercise effective control" over the entirety of the province. Military researcher Walter Dorn speculated that Thant may have been personally sensitive to the issue of secession, having suffered from the bloody Karen conflict in his native Burma and witnessed the consequences of the Partition of India. Holding office during a time of widespread decolonisation in Africa and Asia, Thant was mindful of the precedent he was setting; recognising or encouraging secession in one country could allow it to spread to others with fractious consequences. As late as February 1970, he denounced secession, declaring that the UN "has never accepted and does not accept, and I do not believe it will ever accept, the principle of secession of a part of its Member State." Thant also argued that ONUC had the enumerated authority to use force, as specified in the UN Charter and permitted by the UN Security Council in its resolutions. He maintained that Grandslam was a matter of last resort, as Tshombe had frequently gone back on his promises and decisive action was only taken after sustained Katangese aggression against UN peacekeepers. Thant claimed that ONUC had used force "in self-defence under attack", though this was not strictly the case, as he had, in accordance with the Security Council resolutions, authorised UN troops to undertake offensive action. The forceful operation could also be considered proportional; Katanga possessed an organised gendarmerie with fighter jets, extensive weapon stockpiles and a selection of mercenaries that disregarded the laws of war (i.e. by transporting weapons in vehicles marked with a red cross). ### Fate of ONUC With the end of the Katangese secession, much of the international community felt that ONUC had fulfilled its mandate and interest in maintaining the mission rapidly declined. In February following the reassertion of the central government's authority in Katanga, the UN began phasing out its peacekeeping force, with the goal of completing a total withdrawal by the end of the year. India was among the first countries to recall its troops. At the Congolese government's request, the UN authorised a six-month extension to ONUC's deployment, albeit with a reduced number of personnel. The last troops left the Congo on 30 June 1964. The civilian aid mission remained longer to provide technical assistance to the government. ### Fate of Katanga Tshombe and all of his ministers remained in Katanga following the conclusion of hostilities. He promised on CONAKAT's behalf to support the reunification of the Congo. Control of the provincial police was formally passed to Joseph Iléo on 5 February. As per the central government's decision, Katanga was divided into two provinces: North Katanga and South Katanga. Tshombe protested the "Balkanization" of the province, but cooperated and established his own provincial government in South Katanga by April. Godefroid Munongo also remained in the Katangese government, though he was removed from the interior ministry and made provincial minister of health. Prime Minister Adoula reshuffled his cabinet to include four CONAKAT members, including their floor leaders from both houses of Parliament. The central government also assumed control of Katanga's shares in UMHK, as well its holdings in 18 other companies, facilitating a financial rapprochement with Belgium. Tshombe's rivalry with Association Générale des Baluba du Katanga (BALUBAKAT) leader Jason Sendwe, a northern Katangese politician, led to ethnic violence in Jadotville in which an estimated 74 people were killed. The following month ANC soldiers raided Tshombe's residence on accusations that he was maintaining a private militia. Later, the central government seized documents revealing his continued contact with foreign mercenaries. Fearing arrest and claiming political persecution, Tshombe fled to Paris, France, in June, eventually settling in Madrid, Spain. From there he developed plans with his gendarmerie commanders for a return to power, further complicating the central government's efforts to absorb the force. Halfway through the year South Katanga was further divided into the provinces of Katanga Oriental and Lualaba (also known as the new South Katanga). Though they were opposed to such divisions, many Katangese leaders from the secession joined the new provincial governments. A new constitutional commission was established, and in March 1964 it recommended that the Congo switch from its parliamentary system to a presidential model of government. In June 1964, following the withdrawal of ONUC, the communist Kwilu and Simba rebellions overwhelmed the ANC in eastern and central Congo. The weak central government was unable to effectively deal with the problem, so President Joseph Kasa-Vubu dismissed Prime Minister Adoula and requested Tshombe to replace him. Tshombe arrived in the capital on 24 June and assumed the premiership on 9 July. The insurgencies were successfully quelled with the use of former gendarmes and mercenaries, but in October 1965 Kasa-Vubu dismissed Tshombe. In November, Colonel Joseph-Desiré Mobutu seized power in a coup and Tshombe returned to exile in Spain. Though he had designs on a return to power, Tshombe was imprisoned in Algeria in 1967 and remained there until his death. ### Fate of Katanga's military UN troops began disarming the remainder of the Katangese Gendarmerie after occupying Kolwezi. On 8 February 1963, General Norbert Muke and several of his officers pledged their allegiance to President Kasa-Vubu. In spite of the amnesty and incorporation of Katangese forces into the ANC, many gendarmes remained in hiding, occasionally clashing with government forces. Only 2,000 to 3,000 troops were successfully integrated into the ANC, while the 7,000 untrained gendarmes simply returned to their civilian livelihoods. Approximately 8,000 Katangese soldiers remained unaccounted for. During the meeting in Kolwezi, Tshombe had ordered all remaining Katangese armed forces to withdraw to Portuguese Angola. Jean Schramme was appointed to be commander of an army in exile, while Jeremiah Puren was ordered to evacuate what remained of the Katangese Air Force, along with necessary military equipment and the Katangese treasury. This was accomplished via air and railway. Rhodesian operatives assisted in smuggling the gold reserves out of the country. The last of Schramme's mercenaries and gendarmes were evacuated on 25 January. Other gendarmes spent the remainder of 1963 in Northern Rhodesia. Throughout 1963 gendarmes steadily crossed into Angola. Portuguese colonial authorities, eager to assist the anticommunist Katangese, organised them in "refugee" camps. By 1964, two of the four camps had become dedicated training facilities. Mercenaries travelled from Katanga to Angola via Rhodesia to relay messages between Tshombe, the gendarmes and the mercenaries, with logistical support from Southern Rhodesia. Around April, Tshombe appeared to have remobilised his forces. Immediately after becoming Prime Minister in July, he ordered the exiled Katangese to return to the Congo and mobilised some of those that had been in hiding so that they could suppress the Kwilu and Simba rebels. They were used successfully against the insurgencies, and, following Tshombe's ousting from power, they retained significant political distance from Mobutu's regime. Relations between the two parties quickly worsened, culminating in a bloody mutiny in July 1966. Following their defeat, straggling gendarmes retreated back into Angola. Tshombe began planning to use them to stage an invasion of the Congo, but this was cut short by his imprisonment in Algeria in 1967. They reconstituted themselves as the Front de Libération Nationale Congolaise and made two attempts retake Katanga in the 1970s. Both failed, but secessionist insurgency activity continued. Hostilities resurfaced in 2006 after a new national constitution, which promulgated the division of Katanga into four new provinces, was adopted. In 2011 a militant named Gédéon Kyungu Mutanga broke out of prison. He remobilised local Mai Mai militias and formed the Mai-Mai Kata Katanga to achieve secession. Conflict in the region dramatically worsened, and in mid-2012 several UN humanitarian agencies began allocating numerous resources to help the civilian population. The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known as MONUSCO under its French name) provided logistical and advisory assistance to local government officials, police and the military. Many Katangese people hoped that the UN would, in light of their role in ending the original secession, help resolve the situation. Kyungu and many of his forces surrendered in October 2016 to seek a peaceful solution. The ceasefire failed, however, and Mai-Mai Kata Katanga had resumed its insurgency by 2019.

BAE Systems

British defence, security, and aerospace company

BAE Systems plc (BAE) is a British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company based in London. It is the biggest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe, and the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. Its largest operations are in the United Kingdom, and in the United States, where its BAE Systems Inc. subsidiary is one of the six largest suppliers to the US Department of Defense. Its next biggest markets are Saudi Arabia, then Australia; other major markets include Canada, Japan, India, Turkey, Qatar, Oman and Sweden. The company was formed on 30 November 1999 by the £7.7 billion purchase of and merger with Marconi Electronic Systems (MES), the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc (GEC), by British Aerospace, an aircraft, munitions and naval systems manufacturer. BAE is the successor to various aircraft, shipbuilding, armoured vehicle, armaments and defence electronics companies, including the Marconi Company, the first commercial company devoted to the development and use of radio; A.V. Roe and Company, one of the world's first aircraft companies; de Havilland, manufacturer of the Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner; Hawker Siddeley, manufacturer of the Harrier, the world's first VTOL attack aircraft; British Aircraft Corporation, co-manufacturer of the Concorde supersonic transport; Supermarine, manufacturer of the Spitfire; Yarrow Shipbuilders, builder of the Royal Navy's first destroyers; Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, builder of the world's first battlecruiser; and Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, builder of the Royal Navy's first submarines. Since its 1999 formation, BAE has made a number of acquisitions, most notably of United Defense and Armor Holdings of the United States, and has sold its shares in Airbus, Astrium, AMS and Atlas Elektronik. It is involved in several major defence projects, including the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Astute-class submarine, and the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. BAE Systems is listed on the London Stock Exchange's FTSE 100 Index. ## History ### Heritage British Aerospace bought Marconi Electronic Systems for £7.7 billion on 30 November 1999 and merged with it to form BAE Systems. The company is the successor to many of the most famous British aircraft, defence electronics and warship manufacturers. Predecessor companies built the Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner; the Harrier "jump jet", the world's first operational vertical/short take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft; the "groundbreaking" Blue Vixen radar carried by Sea Harrier FA2s and which formed the basis of the Eurofighter's CAPTOR radar; and co-produced the Concorde supersonic airliner with Aérospatiale. British Aerospace was a civil and military aircraft manufacturer, as well as a provider of military land systems. The company had emerged from the massive consolidation of UK aircraft manufacturers since World War II. British Aerospace was formed on 29 April 1977, by the nationalisation and merger of the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), the Hawker Siddeley Group and Scottish Aviation. Both BAC and Hawker Siddeley were themselves the result of various mergers and acquisitions. Marconi Electronic Systems was the defence subsidiary of British engineering firm the General Electric Company (GEC), dealing largely in military systems integration, as well as naval and land systems. Marconi's heritage dates back to Guglielmo Marconi's Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company, founded in 1897. GEC purchased English Electric (which included Marconi) in 1968 and thereafter used the Marconi brand for its defence businesses (as GEC-Marconi and later Marconi Electronic Systems). GEC's own defence heritage dates back to World War I, when its contribution to the war effort included radios and bulbs. World War II consolidated this position, as the company was involved in important technological advances, notably the cavity magnetron for radar. Between 1945 and 1999, GEC-Marconi/Marconi Electronic Systems became one of the world's most important defence contractors. GEC's major defence related acquisitions included Associated Electrical Industries in 1967, Yarrow Shipbuilders in 1985, Plessey companies in 1989, parts of Ferranti's defence business in 1990, the rump of Ferranti when it went into receivership in 1993/1994, Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering in 1995 and Kværner Govan in 1999. In June 1998, MES acquired Tracor, a major American defence contractor, for £830 million (about US\$1.4 billion). ### Formation The 1997 merger of American corporations Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, which followed the forming of Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defence contractor in 1995, increased the pressure on European defence companies to consolidate. In June 1997 British Aerospace Defence managing director John Weston commented "Europe ... is supporting three times the number of contractors on less than half the budget of the U.S." European governments wished to see the merger of their defence manufacturers into a single entity, a "European Aerospace and Defence Company". As early as 1995 British Aerospace and the German aerospace and defence company DaimlerChrysler Aerospace (DASA) were said to be keen to create a transnational aerospace and defence company. The two companies envisaged including Aérospatiale, the other major European aerospace company, but only after its privatisation. The first stage of this integration was seen as the transformation of Airbus from a consortium of British Aerospace, DASA, Aérospatiale and Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA into an integrated company; in this aim British Aerospace and DASA were united against the various objections of Aérospatiale. As well as Airbus, British Aerospace and DASA were partners in the Panavia Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft projects. Merger discussions began between British Aerospace and DASA in July 1998, just as French participation became more likely with the announcement that Aérospatiale was to merge with Matra and emerge with a diluted French government shareholding. A merger was agreed between British Aerospace chairman Richard Evans and DASA CEO Jürgen Schrempp. Meanwhile, GEC was also under pressure to participate in defence industry consolidation. Reporting the appointment of George Simpson as GEC managing director in 1996, The Independent said "some analysts believe that Mr Simpson's inside knowledge of BAe, a long-rumoured GEC bid target, was a key to his appointment. GEC favours forging a national 'champion' defence group with BAe to compete with the giant US organisations." When GEC put MES up for sale on 22 December 1998, British Aerospace abandoned the DASA merger in favour of purchasing its British rival. The merger of British Aerospace and MES was announced on 19 January 1999. Evans stated in 2004 that his fear was that an American defence contractor would acquire MES and challenge both British Aerospace and DASA. The merger created a vertically integrated company which The Scotsman described as "[a combination of British Aerospace's] contracting and platform-building skills with Marconi's coveted electronics systems capability", for example combining the manufacturer of the Eurofighter with the company that provided many of the aircraft's electronic systems; British Aerospace was MES's largest customer. In contrast, DASA's response to the breakdown of the merger discussion was to merge with Aérospatiale to create the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), a horizontal integration. Seventeen undertakings were given by BAE Systems to the Department of Trade and Industry which prevented a reference of the merger to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. These were largely to ensure that the integrated company would tender sub-contracts to external companies on an equal basis with its subsidiaries. Another condition was the "firewalling" of former British Aerospace and MES teams on defence projects such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). In 2007 the government announced that it had agreed to release BAE Systems from ten of the undertakings due to "a change in circumstances". BAE Systems inherited the UK government-owned "golden" share that was established when British Aerospace was privatised. This unique share prevents amendments of certain parts of the company's Articles of Association without the permission of the Secretary of State. These Articles require that no foreign person or persons acting together may hold more than 15% of the company's shares. ### 2000s BAE Systems' first annual report identified Airbus, support services to militaries and integrated systems for air, land and naval applications as key areas of growth. It also stated the company's desire to both expand in the US and participate in further consolidation in Europe. BAE Systems described 2001 as an "important year" for its European joint ventures, which were reorganised considerably. The company has described the rationale for expansion in the US; "[it] is by far the largest defence market with spend running close to twice that of the Western European nations combined. Importantly, US investment in research and development is significantly higher than in Western Europe." When Dick Olver was appointed chairman in July 2004 he ordered a review of the company's businesses which ruled out further European acquisitions or joint ventures and confirmed a "strategic bias" for expansion and investment in the US. The review also confirmed the attractiveness of the land systems sector and, with two acquisitions in 2004 and 2005, BAE moved from a limited land systems supplier to the second largest such company in the world. This shift in strategy was described as "remarkable" by the Financial Times. Between 2008 and early 2011 BAE acquired five cybersecurity companies in a shift in strategy to take account of reduced spending by governments on "traditional defence items such as warships and tanks". In 2000 Matra Marconi Space, a joint BAE Systems/Matra company, was merged with the space division of DASA to form Astrium. On 16 June 2003 BAE sold its 25% share of Astrium for £84 million, however due to the lossmaking status of the company, BAE Systems invested an equal amount for "restructuring". BAE Systems sold its 54% majority share of BAE Systems Canada, an electronics company, in April for CA\$310 (approx. £197 million as of December 2010). In November 2001, the company announced the closure of the Avro Regional Jet (Avro RJ) production line at Woodford and the cancellation of the Avro RJX, an advanced series of the aircraft family, as the business was "no longer viable". The final Avro RJ to be completed became the last British civil airliner. In November 2001 BAE sold its 49.9% share of Thomson Marconi Sonar to Thales for £85 million. A further step of European defence consolidation was the merger of BAE's share of Matra BAe Dynamics and the missile division of Alenia Marconi Systems (AMS) into MBDA in December. MBDA thus became the world's second largest missile manufacturer. Although EADS (now Airbus SE) was later reported to be interested in acquiring full control of MBDA, BAE said that, unlike Airbus, MBDA is a "core business". In June 2002, BAE Systems confirmed it was in takeover discussions with TRW, an American aerospace, automotive and defence business. This was prompted by Northrop Grumman's £4.1 billion (approx. US\$6 billion c. 2002) hostile bid for TRW in February 2002. A bidding war between BAE Systems, Northrop and General Dynamics ended on 1 June when Northrop's increased bid of £5.1 billion was accepted. On 11 December 2002, BAE Systems issued a shock profit warning due to cost overruns of the Nimrod MRA4 maritime reconnaissance/attack aircraft and the Astute-class submarine projects. On 19 February 2003 BAE took a charge of £750 million against these projects and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) agreed to pay a further £700 million of the cost. In 2000 the company had taken a £300 million "loss charge" on the Nimrod contract which was expected to cover "all the costs of completion of the current contract". The troubled Nimrod project would ultimately be cancelled as part of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR). The UK government, following a cabinet row described as "one of the most bitter Cabinet disputes over defence contracts since the Westland helicopter affair in 1985", ordered 20 BAE Hawk trainer aircraft with 24 options in July 2003 in a deal worth £800 million. The deal was significant because it was a factor in India's decision to finalise a £1 billion order for 66 Hawks in March 2004. Also in July 2003 BAE Systems and Finmeccanica announced their intention to set up three joint venture companies, to be collectively known as Eurosystems. These companies would have pooled the avionics, C4ISTAR and communications businesses of the two companies. However the difficulties of integrating the companies in this way led to a re-evaluation of the proposal; BAE Systems' 2004 Annual Report states that "recognising the complexity of the earlier proposed Eurosystems transaction with Finmeccanica we have moved to a simpler model". The main part of this deal was the dissolution of AMS and the establishment of SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems; BAE Systems sold its 25% share of the latter to Finmeccanica for €400 million (approx. £270 million c. 2007) in March 2007. In May 2004, it was reported that the company was considering selling its shipbuilding divisions, BAE Systems Naval Ships and BAE Systems Submarines. It was understood that General Dynamics wished to acquire the submarine building facilities at Barrow-in-Furness, while VT Group was said to be interested in the remaining yards on the Clyde. Instead, in 2008 BAE Systems merged its Surface Fleet arm with the shipbuilding operations of VT Group to form BVT Surface Fleet, an aim central to the British Government's Defence Industrial Strategy. On 4 June 2004, BAE Systems outbid General Dynamics for Alvis Vickers, the UK's main manufacturer of armoured vehicles. Alvis Vickers was merged with the company's RO Defence unit to form BAE Systems Land Systems. Recognising the lack of scale of this business compared to General Dynamics, BAE Systems executives soon identified the US defence company United Defense Industries (UDI), a major competitor to General Dynamics, as a main acquisition target. On 7 March 2005 BAE announced the £2.25 billion (approx. US\$4.2 billion c. 2005) acquisition of UDI. UDI, now BAE Systems Land and Armaments, manufactures combat vehicles, artillery systems, naval guns, missile launchers and precision guided munitions. In December 2005, BAE Systems announced the sale of its German naval systems subsidiary, Atlas Elektronik, to ThyssenKrupp and EADS. The Financial Times described the sale as "cut price" because French company Thales bid €300 million, but was blocked from purchasing Atlas by the German government on national security grounds. On 31 January 2006 the company announced the sale of BAE Systems Aerostructures to Spirit AeroSystems, Inc., having said as early as 2002 that it wished to dispose of what it did not regard as a "core business". On 18 August 2006 Saudi Arabia signed a contract worth £6 billion to £10 billion for 72 Eurofighter Typhoons, to be delivered by BAE Systems. On 10 September 2006 the company was awarded a £2.5 billion contract for the upgrade of 80 Royal Saudi Air Force Tornado IDSs. One of BAE Systems' major aims, as highlighted in the 2005 Annual Report, was the granting of increased technology transfer between the UK and the US. The F-35 (JSF) programme became the focus of this effort, with British government ministers such as Lord Drayson, Minister for Defence Procurement, suggesting the UK would withdraw from the project without the transfer of technology that would allow the UK to operate and maintain F-35s independently. On 12 December 2006, Lord Drayson signed an agreement which allows "an unbroken British chain of command" for operation of the aircraft. On 22 December 2006 BAE received a £947 million contract to provide guaranteed availability of Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornados. In May 2007 the company announced its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. was to purchase Armor Holdings for £2.3 billion (approx. US\$4.5 billion c. 2007) and completed the deal on 31 July 2007. The company was a manufacturer of tactical wheeled vehicles and a provider of vehicle and individual armour systems and survivability technologies. BAE Systems (and British Aerospace previously) was a technology partner to the McLaren Formula One team from 1996 to December 2007. The partnership originally focused on McLaren's F1 car's aerodynamics, eventually moving on to carbon fibre techniques, wireless systems and fuel management. BAE Systems' main interest in the partnership was to learn about the high speed build and operations processes of McLaren. The company announced the acquisition of Tenix Defence, a major Australian defence contractor in January 2008. The purchase was completed on 27 June for A\$775 million (£373 million) making BAE Systems Australia that country's largest defence contractor. The MoD awarded BAE Systems a 15-year munitions contract in August 2008 worth up to £3 billion, known as Munition Acquisition Supply Solution (MASS). The contract guaranteed supply of 80% of the UK Armed Forces' ammunition and required BAE to modernise its munitions manufacturing facilities. BAE Systems expanded its intelligence and security business with the £531 million purchase of Detica Group in July 2008. It continued this strategy with purchases of Danish cyber and intelligence company ETI for approximately \$210 million in December 2010, and Norkom Group PLC the following month for €217 million. The latter provides counter fraud and anti-money laundering solutions to the global financial services industry where its software assists institutions to comply with regulations on financial intelligence and monitoring. #### Airbus shareholding BAE Systems inherited British Aerospace's share of Airbus Industrie, which consisted of two factories at Broughton and Filton. These facilities manufactured wings for the Airbus family of aircraft. In 2001 Airbus was incorporated as Airbus SAS, a joint stock company. In return for a 20% share in the new company BAE Systems transferred ownership of its Airbus plants (known as Airbus UK) to the new company. Despite repeated suggestions as early as 2000 that BAE Systems wished to sell its 20% share of Airbus, the possibility was denied by the company. However, on 6 April 2006 it was reported that it was indeed to sell its stake, then "conservatively valued" at £2.4 billion. Due to the slow pace of informal negotiations, BAE Systems exercised its put option which saw investment bank Rothschild appointed to give an independent valuation. Six days after this process began, Airbus announced delays to the A380 with significant effects on the value of Airbus shares. On 2 June 2006 Rothschild valued the company's share at £1.87 billion, well below its own analysts' and even EADS's expectations. The BAE Systems board recommended that the company proceed with the sale. Shareholders voted in favour and the sale was completed on 13 October. This saw the end of UK-owned involvement in civil airliner production. Airbus Operations Ltd (the former Airbus UK) continues to be the Airbus "Centre of Excellence" for wing production, employing over 9,500. ### 2010s In February 2010 BAE Systems announced a £592 million writedown of the former Armor Holdings business following the loss of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles contract in 2009. It was outbid by Oshkosh Corporation for the £2.3 billion (\$3.7 billion) contract. Land and Armaments had been the "star performer" of BAE Systems' subsidiaries, growing from sales of £482 million in 2004 to £6.7 billion in 2009. BAE Systems inherited British Aerospace's 35% share of Saab AB, with which it produced and marketed the Gripen fighter aircraft. In 2005 it reduced this share to 20.5% and in March 2010 announced its intention to sell the remainder. The Times stated that the decision brought "to an end its controversial relationship with the Gripen fighter aircraft". Several of the export campaigns for the aircraft were subject to allegations of bribery and corruption. The company continued its move into support services in May 2010 with the purchase of the marine support company Atlantic Marine for \$352 million. In September 2010 BAE Systems announced plans to sell the Platform Solutions division of BAE Systems Inc., which the Financial Times estimated could yield as much as £1.3 billion. Despite "considerable expressions of interest", the sale was abandoned in January 2011. The purchases of Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, the Astute-class submarines, and the Type 26 frigates were all confirmed in the 2010 SDSR. A new generation of nuclear missile submarines, the Dreadnought-class, was ordered in 2016. BAE Systems sold the regional aircraft leasing and asset management arm of its Regional Aircraft business in May 2011. This unit leases the BAe 146/Avro RJ family, BAe ATP, Jetstream and BAe 748. The company retained the support and engineering activities of the business. In September 2011, BAE Systems began consultation with unions and workers over plans to cut nearly 3,000 jobs, mostly in the company's military aircraft division. In its 2012 half-year report, the company revealed a 10% decline in revenue in the six months up to 30 June due to falling demand for armaments. In May 2012 the governments of the UK and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement on an arms package which saw a £1.6 billion contract awarded to BAE for the delivery of 55 Pilatus PC-21 and 22 BAE Systems Hawk aircraft. The Sultanate of Oman ordered Typhoon and Hawk aircraft worth £2.5 billion in December 2012. In September 2012, it was reported that BAE Systems and EADS had entered merger talks which would have seen BAE shareholders own 40% of the resulting organisation. On 10 October 2012, the companies said the merger talks had been called off. The Guardian reported that this was due to the German Government's concern about the "potential size of the French shareholding in the combined company, as well as disagreements over the location of the group's headquarters". In November 2013, BAE Systems announced that shipbuilding would cease in Portsmouth in 2014 with the loss of 940 jobs, and a further 835 jobs would be lost at Filton, near Bristol, and at the shipyards in Govan, Rosyth, and Scotstoun in Scotland. On 9 October 2014, the company announced the loss of 440 management jobs across the country, with 286 of the job cuts in Lancashire. In July 2014 it announced the acquisition of US intelligence company Signal Innovations Group Inc. to augment imagery and data analysis technologies in its Intelligence & Security business. In August 2014, BAE was awarded a £248 million contract from the British government to build three new offshore patrol vessels. In October 2014, BAE Systems won a £600 million contract from the MoD to maintain Portsmouth naval base for five years. During 2014 BAE Systems acquired US-based cybersecurity firm Silversky for \$232.5 million. During Prime Minister Theresa May's visit to Turkey in January 2017, BAE and TAI officials signed an agreement, worth about £100 million, for BAE to provide assistance in developing the TAI TFX aircraft. On 10 October 2017, BAE announced that it would lay off nearly 2,000 out of its approximately 35,000 employees in Britain, mainly due to an order shortage for the Typhoon fighter. In 2019 BAE Systems sold a 55% share of its UK land business to Rheinmetall. The resultant joint venture (JV), Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL), was established in July 2019 following regulatory approval and is headquartered at the existing facility in Telford, Shropshire. ### 2020s In August 2020 BAE Systems completed the purchase of United Technologies' military GPS businesses for \$1.9 billion and Raytheon’s military airborne radios business for \$275 million. The sale of these two business was a condition of the merger approval that saw their two parent companies merge to form Raytheon Technologies. In November 2020, the MoD announced the award of a 20-year, £2.4 billion munitions contract to BAE. This will see BAE manufacture 39 different munitions for the UK armed forces and supersedes the 2008 MASS contract. In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, major arms manufacturers, including BAE Systems, reported a sharp increase in interim sales and profits. In August 2023, BAE agreed to acquire the aerospace division of US-based Ball Corporation for \$5.6 billion in cash. ## Products BAE Systems plays a significant role in the production of military equipment. In 2017, 98% of BAE Systems' total sales were military related. It plays important roles in military aircraft production. The company's Typhoon fighter is one of the main front line aircraft of the RAF. The company is a major partner in the F-35 Lightning II programme. Its Hawk advanced jet trainer aircraft has been widely exported. In July 2006, the British government declassified the HERTI (High Endurance Rapid Technology Insertion), an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which can navigate autonomously. It is currently developing a sixth-generation jet fighter aircraft for the RAF marketed as the "Tempest" along with the MoD, Rolls-Royce, Leonardo S.p.A. and MBDA. It is intended to enter service from 2035 replacing the Typhoon aircraft in service with the RAF. BAE Systems Land and Armaments manufactures the M2/M3 Bradley fighting vehicle family, the US Navy Advanced Gun System (AGS), M113 armoured personnel carrier (APC), M109 Paladin, Archer, M777 howitzer, the British Army's Challenger 2, Warrior Tracked Armoured Vehicle, Panther Command and Liaison Vehicle, and the SA80 assault rifle. Major naval projects include the Astute-class submarines, Type 26 frigates and Dreadnought-class submarines. BAE Systems is indirectly engaged in production of nuclear weapons – through its share of MBDA it is involved with the production and support of the ASMP missile, an air-launched nuclear missile which forms part of the French nuclear deterrent. The company is also the UK's only nuclear submarine manufacturer and thus produces a key element of the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons capability. ## Areas of business BAE Systems' biggest markets are the US 44%, UK 20%, Saudi Arabia 11% and Australia 4%, as of 2022. ### United Kingdom BAE Systems is the main supplier to the UK MoD; in 2009/2010 BAE Systems companies in the list of Top 100 suppliers to the MoD received contracts totalling £3.98 billion, with total revenue being higher when other subsidiary income is included. In comparison, the second largest supplier is Babcock International Group and its subsidiaries, with a revenue of £1.1 billion from the MoD. Oxford Economic Forecasting states that in 2002 the company's UK businesses employed 111,578 people, achieved export sales of £3 billion and paid £2.6 billion in taxes. These figures exclude the contribution of Airbus UK. After its creation, BAE Systems had a difficult relationship with the MoD. This was attributed to deficient project management by the company, but also in part to the deficiencies in the terms of "fixed price contracts". CEO Mike Turner said in 2006 "We had entered into contracts under the old competition rules that frankly we shouldn't have taken". These competition rules were introduced by Lord Levene during the 1980s to shift the burden of risk to the contractor and were in contrast to "cost plus contracts" where a contractor was paid for the value of its product plus an agreed profit. BAE Systems was operating in "the only truly open defence market", which meant it was competing with US and European companies for British defence projects, while they were protected in their home markets. The US defence market is competitive, however largely between American firms, while foreign companies are excluded. In December 2005 the MoD published the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) which has been widely acknowledged to recognise BAE Systems as the UK's "national champion". The government claimed the DIS would "promote a sustainable industrial base, that retains in the UK those industrial capabilities needed to ensure national security." After the publication of the DIS BAE Systems CEO Mike Turner said "If we didn't have the DIS and our profitability and the terms of trade had stayed as they were... then there had to be a question mark about our future in the UK". Lord Levene said in the balance between value for money or maintaining a viable industrial base the DIS "tries as well as it can to steer a middle course and to achieve as much as it can in both directions. ...We will never have a perfect solution." ### United States The attraction of MES to British Aerospace was largely its ownership of Tracor, a major American defence contractor. BAE Systems Inc. now sells more to the US Department of Defense (DOD) than to the UK MoD. The company has been allowed to buy important defence contractors in the US, however its status as a UK company requires that its US subsidiaries are governed by American executives under Special Security Arrangements. The company faces fewer impediments in this sense than its European counterparts, as there is a high degree of integration between the US and UK defence establishments. BAE Systems' purchase of Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronic Systems in November 2000 was described by John Hamre, CEO of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Deputy Secretary of Defense, as "precedent setting" given the advanced and classified nature of many of that company's products. The possibility of a merger between BAE Systems Inc. and major North American defence contractors has long been reported, including Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. ### Rest of the world BAE Systems Australia is one of the largest defence contractors in Australia, having more than doubled in size with the acquisition of Tenix Defence in 2008. The Al Yamamah agreements between the UK and Saudi Arabia require "the provision of a complete defence package for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"; BAE Systems employs 5,300 people in the country. As of March 2022, BAE Systems employs over 7,000 people in Saudi Arabia and 75 per cent of the employees are Saudi nationals. BAE Systems' interests in Sweden are a result of the purchases of Alvis Vickers and UDI, which owned Hägglunds and Bofors respectively; the companies are now part of BAE Systems AB. On 6 April 2022, BAE Systems announced the establishment of BAE Systems Japan, a subsidiary located in Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan. The new company will provide comprehensive cooperation with Japanese industry and aims to strengthen relations with the Japanese Ministry of Defense and the Japan Self-Defense Forces. In late August 2023, BAE Systems announced that it had opened an office in Ukraine, and had signed an agreement for cooperation on the repair, spare parts, and production of L119 howitzers within Ukraine. ## Shareholders BAE Systems' 2022 Annual Report listed the following as "significant" shareholders: Barclays 3.98%, BlackRock 9.90%, Capital Group Companies 14.18%, Invesco 4.97% and Silchester International Investors 3.01%. ## Organisation BAE Systems has its head office and its registered office in City of Westminster, London. In addition to its central London offices, it has an office in Farnborough, Hampshire, that houses functional specialists and support functions. ## Corporate governance BAE Systems' chairman is Sir Roger Carr. The executive directors are Charles Woodburn (CEO), Brad Greve and Tom Arsenault. The non-executive directors are Carolyn Fairbairn, Crystal E. Ashby, Elizabeth Corley, Chris Grigg, Ewan Kirk, Ian Tyler, Nicole Piasecki, Stephen Pearce, Jane Griffiths and Nick Anderson. The company's first CEO, John Weston, was forced to resign in 2002 in a boardroom "coup" and was replaced by Mike Turner. The Business reported that Weston was ousted when non-executive directors informed the chairman that they had lost confidence in him. Further, it was suggested that at least one non-executive director was encouraged to make such a move by the MoD due to the increasingly fractious relationship between BAE Systems and the government. As well as the terms of the Nimrod contract, Weston had fought against the MOD's insistence that one of the first three Type 45 destroyers should be built by VT Group. The Business said he considered this "competition-policy gone mad". It is understood that Turner had a poor working relationship with senior MoD officials, for example with former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. The first meeting between Olver and Hoon was said to have gone well; a MoD official commented "He is a man we can do business with". It has been suggested that relations between Turner and Olver were tense. On 16 October 2007 the company announced that Mike Turner would retire in August 2008. The Times called his departure plans "abrupt" and a "shock", given previous statements that he wished to retire in 2013 at the age of 65. Despite suggestions that BAE Systems would prefer an American CEO due to the increasing importance of the United States defence market to the company and the opportunity to make a clean break from corruption allegations and investigations related to the Al-Yamamah contracts, the company announced on 27 June 2008, that it had selected the company's chief operating officer, Ian King, to succeed Turner with effect from 1 September 2008. The Financial Times noted that King's career at Marconi distances him from the British Aerospace-led Al Yamamah project. Charles Woodburn succeeded Ian King as CEO on 1 July 2017. Woodburn joined BAE Systems in May 2016 as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Board Director following over 20 years' international experience in senior management positions in the oil and gas industry. ### Senior leadership - Chairman: Sir Roger Carr (since 2014) - Chief Executive: Charles Woodburn (since 2017) #### List of former chairmen 1. Sir Richard Evans (1999–2004) 2. Sir Dick Olver (2004–2014) #### List of former chief executives 1. John Weston (1999–2002) 2. Michael Turner (2002–2008) 3. Ian King (2008–2017) ## Financial information Financial information for the company is as follows: ## Corruption investigations ### Serious Fraud Office BAE Systems has been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for the use of corruption to help sell arms to Chile, Czech Republic, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania and Qatar. In response, BAE Systems' 2006 Corporate Responsibility Report states "We continue to reject these allegations... We take our obligations under the law extremely seriously and will continue to comply with all legal requirements around the world. In June 2007 Lord Woolf was selected to lead what the BBC described as an "independent review.... [an] ethics committee to look into how the defence giant conducts its arms deals". The report, Ethical business conduct in BAE Systems plc – the way forward, made 23 recommendations, measures which the company committed to implement. The finding stated that "in the past BAE did not pay sufficient attention to ethical standards in the way it conducted business", and was described by the BBC as "an embarrassing admission". In September 2009, the SFO announced that it intended to prosecute BAE Systems for offences relating to overseas corruption. The Guardian claimed that a penalty more than £500 million might be an acceptable settlement package. On 5 February 2010, BAE Systems agreed to pay criminal fines of £257 million (US\$400 million) to the US and £30 million to the UK. The \$400 million fine was a result of a plea bargain with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) whereby BAE Systems was convicted of felony conspiracy to defraud the United States government. This was one of the largest fines in the history of the DOJ. Judge Bates said the company's conduct involved "deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law, I think it's fair to say, on an enormous scale". BAE Systems did not directly admit to bribery, and is thus not internationally blacklisted from future contracts. Some of the £30 million penalty the company will pay in fines to the UK will be paid ex gratia for the benefit of the people of Tanzania. On 2 March 2010, Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and Corner House Research were successful in gaining a High Court injunction on the SFO's settlement with BAE Systems; however in April 2010 the two organisations withdrew their application for a judicial review. ### Saudi Arabia Both BAE Systems and its predecessor (BAe) have long been the subject of allegations of bribery in relation to its business in Saudi Arabia. The UK National Audit Office (NAO) investigated the Al Yamamah contracts and has so far not published its conclusions, the only NAO report ever to be withheld. The MoD has stated "The report remains sensitive. Disclosure would harm both international relations and the UK's commercial interests." The company has been accused of maintaining a £60 million Saudi slush fund. In November 2006, Saudi Arabia put pressure on the British government to end the SFO investigation by suspending negotiations over a new deal for seventy-two Typhoon fighter jets. On 14 December 2006 it was announced that the SFO was "discontinuing" its investigation into the company. It stated that representations to its Director and the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had led to the conclusion that the wider public interest "to safeguard national and international security" outweighed any potential benefits of further investigation. The termination of the investigation has been controversial. In June 2007, the BBC's Panorama alleged BAE Systems "paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan" in return for his role in the Al Yamamah deals. In late June 2007 the DOJ began a formal investigation into BAE's compliance with anti-corruption laws. On 19 May 2008 BAE Systems confirmed that its CEO Mike Turner and non-executive director Nigel Rudd had been detained "for about 20 minutes" at two US airports the previous week and that the DOJ had issued "a number of additional subpoenas in the US to employees of BAE Systems plc and BAE Systems Inc as part of its ongoing investigation". The Times suggested that such "humiliating behaviour by the DOJ" is unusual toward a company that is co-operating fully. A judicial review of the decision by the SFO to drop the investigation was granted on 9 November 2007. On 10 April 2008 the High Court ruled that the SFO "acted unlawfully" by dropping its investigation. The Times described the ruling as "one of the most strongly worded judicial attacks on government action" which condemned how "ministers 'buckled' to 'blatant threats' that Saudi cooperation in the fight against terror would end unless the ...investigation was dropped." On 24 April the SFO was granted leave to appeal to the House of Lords against the ruling. There was a two-day hearing before the Lords on 7 and 8 July 2008. On 30 July the House of Lords unanimously overturned the High Court ruling, stating that the decision to discontinue the investigation was lawful. ### Others In September 2005 The Guardian reported that banking records showed that BAE Systems paid £1 million to Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator. The Guardian has also reported that "clandestine arms deals" have been under investigation in Chile and the UK since 2003 and that British Aerospace and BAE Systems made a number of payments to Pinochet advisers. BAE Systems is alleged to have paid "secret offshore commissions" of over £7 million to secure the sale of HMS London and HMS Coventry to the Romanian Navy. The company received a £116 million contract for the refurbishment of the ships prior to delivery; however the British taxpayer only received the scrap value of £100,000 each from the sale. BAE Systems ran into controversy in 2002 over the abnormally high cost of a radar system sold to Tanzania. The sale was criticised by several opposition MPs and the World Bank; Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short declared that BAE Systems had "ripped off" developing nations. In January 2007, details of an investigation by the SFO into BAE Systems' sales tactics in regard to South Africa were reported, highlighting the £2.3 billion deal to supply Hawk trainers and Gripen fighters as suspect. In May 2011, as allegations of bribery behind South Africa's Gripen procurement continued, the company's partner Saab AB issued strong denials of any illicit payments being made; however in June 2011 Saab announced that BAE Systems had made unaccounted payments of roughly \$3.5 million to a consultant; this revelation prompted South African opposition parties to call for a renewed inquiry. The Gripen's procurement by the Czech Republic was also under investigation by the SFO in 2006 over allegations of bribery. ## Criticism ### Espionage In September 2003 The Sunday Times reported that BAE Systems had hired a private security contractor to collect information about individuals working at CAAT and their activities. In February 2007, it was reported that the corporation had again obtained private confidential information from CAAT. The company was reported in 2012 to have been the target of Chinese cyber espionage that may have stolen secrets related to the F-35 Lightning II. ### Cluster bombs In 2003, BAE Systems was criticised for its role in the production of cluster bombs, due to the long term risk for injury or death to civilians. Following the 2008 Oslo Convention on Cluster Munitions BAE Systems was among the first defence contractors to stop their manufacture and by 2012 the majority of the munitions had been destroyed. ### Saudi war in Yemen Saudi Arabia is BAE's third biggest market. The Independent reported that BAE-supplied aircraft were used to bomb Red Cross and MSF hospitals in Yemen." Sir Roger Carr rejected criticism over BAE's continued work in Saudi Arabia, saying "We will stop doing it when they tell us to stop doing it... We maintain peace by having the ability to make war and that has stood the test of time." BAE Systems sold weaponry worth £17.6 billion to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen war. ### Political influence and donations Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said of his time in office that he "came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to number 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision which would be incommoding to BAE." In the United States BAE Systems is a significant political donor to both Democratic and Republican candidates and organisations. In 2016 its political action committee (PAC) contributions were the second largest of any foreign corporation after UBS. In January 2021 following the 2021 United States Capitol attack BAE Systems announced that it was suspending political donations in the US. On 30 March it once again began making large political contributions, including one to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. ## See also - Aerospace industry in the United Kingdom

Partners in Crime (Doctor Who)

"Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008. The episode reintroduced actor and comedian Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who had previously appeared in the 2006 Christmas Special "The Runaway Bride". In the episode, Donna and the alien time traveller the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) meet while separately investigating Adipose Industries, a company that has created a revolutionary diet pill. Together, they attempt to stop the death of thousands of people in London after the head of the company, the alien Miss Foster (Sarah Lancashire), creates short white aliens made from human body fat. The episode's alien creatures, the Adipose, were created using the software MASSIVE, commonly used for crowd sequences in fantasy and science fiction films. "Partners in Crime" features the return of three recurring characters: Jacqueline King reprises her role as Sylvia Noble from "The Runaway Bride"; Bernard Cribbins reprises his role as Wilfred Mott from "Voyage of the Damned", to replace the character of Geoff Noble after actor Howard Attfield died; and Billie Piper briefly reprises her role as Rose Tyler for the first time since the second series' finale "Doomsday" (2006), in a scene that was not included in preview showings. The episode received many positive reviews. Most critics liked the visual effects used to create the Adipose. Critics also praised Tate's subdued acting in comparison to "The Runaway Bride"; Donna was changed from a "shouting fishwife" to a more emotional person when she became a full-time companion. Critics' opinions were split over the episode's plot: opinion on executive producer Russell T Davies' writing ranged from "pure pleasure" to "the back of a fag packet". ## Plot Donna Noble finds herself regretting her decision to decline the Tenth Doctor's invitation to travel in the TARDIS. She has started investigating conspiracy theories in the hope that she will find him again. The Doctor and Donna, neither one aware of the other's involvement, both investigate Adipose Industries, which is marketing a special diet pill to the people of London. They find that the pills use latent body fat to parthenogenetically create small white aliens called Adipose that spawn at night and leave the host's body. The Doctor and Donna separately infiltrate the offices of Adipose Industries, each unaware that the other is there. As they explore the building, they suddenly encounter each other through opposite windows in an office. They are confronted by Miss Foster, an alien who is using Britain's overweight population to create the Adipose babies for the Adiposian First Family. Miss Foster pursues the Doctor and Donna around the building, finally catching them in an office. She tells the Doctor that the Adipose lost their breeding planet and hired Miss Foster to find a replacement. The Doctor uses Miss Foster's sonic pen and his sonic screwdriver to create a diversion and escape. Miss Foster accelerates her plans, knowing that the Doctor will attempt to stop her. Throughout London, the Adipose begin to spawn and soon number several thousand. The Doctor and Donna prevent total emergency parthenogenesis from occurring, which would have killed those who had taken the pill, and the remainder of the young Adipose make their way to Adipose Industries. The Adiposian First Family arrive in a spaceship and begin collecting their young. The Doctor tries to warn Miss Foster about her safety, but she disregards him and is killed when the Adipose drops her from their transport beam to her death, to cover their unsanctioned seeding efforts. Donna accepts the Doctor's original offer to travel in the TARDIS. Donna makes a detour to leave her car keys in a litter bin, telling her mother Sylvia to collect them later. While there, she meets a blonde woman and asks her to help Sylvia find the keys. The woman turns out to be Rose Tyler, who fades from view as she walks away from the area. Donna asks the Doctor to fly the TARDIS past Donna's grandfather Wilfred Mott, who is watching the night sky through a telescope. Donna waves Wilfred off inside the TARDIS. ## Production ### Casting "Partners in Crime" features several actors returning to the series. Catherine Tate was offered the opportunity to return as Donna Noble during lunch with executive producer Julie Gardner. Tate, who expected Gardner would ask about appearing in a biopic, later admitted it was "the furthest thing from [her] mind". Tate's return was controversial amongst Doctor Who fans; the criticism she received was compared to Daniel Craig after he was cast as James Bond. Howard Attfield, who appeared as Donna's father Geoff in "The Runaway Bride", filmed several scenes for this episode, but died before his scenes for the remainder of the season were completed. The producers retired his character out of respect, and dedicated him in the closing credits for the episode. Producer Phil Collinson suggested transferring his traits to the unrelated character Stan Mott from "Voyage of the Damned", and rewriting his role as Donna's grandfather. Executive producers Russell T Davies and Gardner liked the idea and recalled Bernard Cribbins to the role to re-film Attfield's scenes, with the character renamed as Wilfred—a name Davies favoured for Donna's grandfather—in time for the credits of "Voyage of the Damned" to be changed. ### Writing Davies took a different approach while writing the episode. David Tennant and Sarah Lancashire noted the character of Miss Foster had good intentions but was morally ambiguous. The premise of the Adipose pill was equally ambiguous with rare side-effects, but was a "win-win situation" for anyone involved. Davies based the character of Miss Foster on Supernanny star Jo Frost and Argentine philanthropist and politician Eva Perón, and Lancashire compared her character to Mary Poppins. The Adipose are a different style to regular Doctor Who villains; antagonists such as Lazarus in "The Lazarus Experiment" or the werewolf in "Tooth and Claw" were singular monsters designed to scare the audience; the Adipose were written as "cute" to provide a "bizarre [and] surreal" experience. Davies made some changes to Donna's character. The character was "rounded ... out from being a shouting fishwife to someone who's quite vulnerable and emotional". Donna was written to provide a "caustic" and "grown-up" attitude towards the Doctor, in opposition to Rose and Martha, who fell in love with him. Tate considered Donna to be more equal to the Doctor because her character did not romanticise him, allowing her to question his morality more easily. ### Filming The episode was in the fourth production block in the season, and was filmed in October 2007. The out-of-sequence filming allowed producers to use props to "seed" later episodes; ATMOS, a plot device in the episodes "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky", is referred to by a sticker on a taxi's windscreen. As the episode mostly takes place at night, many scenes were filmed in the early morning. The scene where Donna and the Doctor investigate Adipose was difficult to film. The scene took thirty shots to complete, and Tennant and Tate experienced problems avoiding each other on-screen. The scene was filmed in Picture Finance's call centre on the outskirts of Newport on an early Sunday morning, with the company's telephonists serving as extras. Exterior shots of Adipose Industries were filmed at the British Gas building (Helmont House) in Cardiff's city centre. For health and safety reasons, Tennant was prohibited from performing his own stunts in the window cleaning platform. His only shot that required stunts was when he catches Miss Foster's sonic pen, a shot that took several takes to perfect. ### Adipose The Adipose were inspired by a stuffed toy Davies owned. The name comes from the scientific name for body fat, adipose tissue. Davies' brief outlined a "cute" child-friendly creature shaped like a block of lard, similar to the Pillsbury Doughboy. Further consultation with post-production team The Mill resulted in the ears and the single fang each Adipose has. Stephen Regelous, who won an Academy Award for his software Massive, flew to London to supervise the creation of the crowd special effects. Regelous, a Doctor Who fan, was enthusiastic about helping The Mill with special effects, stating that "When I first found out that the Mill was working on Doctor Who, I was quietly hoping that Massive might be used to create hordes of Daleks or Cybermen and with series 4, I jumped at the opportunity to be involved." The Mill created two types of Adipose: extras with artificial intelligence and independent movement, and "hero" Adipose, which were hand-animated. ## Broadcast and reception ### Broadcast and ratings The episode was broadcast on 5 April 2008 at 18:20, the earliest timeslot since the show's revival in 2005. Davies criticised the BBC's scheduling department and claimed the show could lose 1.5 million viewers. The show retained a similar time of broadcast for a further four episodes, before returning to around 19:00. from "The Doctor's Daughter" onwards. The preview version of the episode supplied to the press and aired at the press launch omitted the scene that features Rose; before broadcast, only the production team, Tate, and Tennant had seen the scene. The scene contains Rose's departure theme, "Doomsday". Tennant commented "on the night of transmission ... the Radio Times won't have told you it's coming, it'll come as a genuine [...] prickle up the spine". Overnight figures estimated the show was watched by 8.4 million viewers, with a peak of 8.7 million, 39.4% of the television audience. The consolidated rating was 9.1 million viewers. Doctor Who was therefore the most watched show on 5 April, although the Grand National had a higher peak with 10.1 million viewers. The episode's Appreciation Index was 88 (considered "Excellent"), the highest for any television show aired on 5 April. ### Critical reception The episode received many positive reviews. John Preston, writing for The Daily Telegraph, called the episode an "undiluted triumph". Opening his review, he said "last night's episode struck me as being as close to 50 minutes of pure pleasure as you're likely to get on television". He noted the episode's clever tackling of the topical theme of obesity, and its mixture of emotion and special effects. In closing, he said "the dejected critic, denied even the smallest nit to pick, walks glumly away". Scott Matthewman of The Stage lamented that the Adipose were not threatening enough. He liked the Adipose's execution of Miss Foster, a "momentary pause in mid-air, gravity only kicking in when the character looks down", comparing it to Wile E. Coyote and Chuck Jones, which "[was] a nice little touch in an episode ... full of them". He also appreciated Tate, saying that "David Tennant finally has a partner who is approaching an equal". Sam Wollaston of The Guardian wrote that Tate was "not right for this role" and "too hysterical, too comedy, not cool enough", and felt her inclusion was an attempt to trade on the popularity of her own series and "broaden the appeal of [Dr Who] still further". He also found the music "a bit oppressive" but concluded that, despite these criticisms, the show was "still awfully nice television". Keith Watson of Metro gave the episode 4 stars out of 5. He admitted that despite his dislike of Tate, "she isn't that bad". His review of the Adipose was positive, citing them as a reason of the quality of the show. Closing, he said "it split [his] sides". Jon Wise of The People said "Doctor Who is a super-galactic way of spending a Saturday night indoors", and appreciated that Donna was not romantically interested in the Doctor, unlike Martha or Rose. Ben Rawson-Jones gave the episode a wholly positive review, summarising it as containing "pure fantastic family fun, delivering a winning blend of action, comedy, poignancy and one unexpected shock cameo". The episode received several negative reviews. Andrew Billen, writing for The Times, lamented that Davies had "forgotten that Doctor Who's main task is to send children scuttling behind sofas while entertaining their fathers with the odd philosophical idea, the occasional classical reference, a joke or two they would probably not wish to explain and a wee bit of space totty". Billen also criticised the writing and acting, but commended Tate for a "toned down performance". Alan Stanley Blair of SyFy Portal summarised it as "a runaway Saturday morning cartoon in desperate need to a solid story". Blair found flaws with the comedy and the music in the episode, but was impressed with Tate's acting and Piper's cameo. Kevin O'Sullivan of the Sunday Mirror criticised Tate and Tennant for overacting, and had concerns about the writing: "It didn't exactly ooze tension. All we got in the way of terrifying space enemies was Sarah Lancashire hamming it up as an intergalactic super nanny, a couple of security guards with guns and lots of cute little fat babies." Ian Hyland of News of the World criticised the child-friendly storyline, comparing it to "the back of a fag packet". He also criticised Tennant for appearing "jaded" and Tate for "still shouting". Reviewing in 2022, Mark Braxton for Radio Times described the return of Tate as a "casting coup", and opined that Donna and the Doctor paired better than previous matchups in the series. Graphics-wise, Braxton noted that the CGI used for the Adipose had not aged well, but that the graphics work for the spaceship was done better. He also positively review the portrayal of Miss Foster, and praised Davies' use of sadness in the episode. Christina Orlando, writing for Tor.com in 2022, also praised the chemistry between the Doctor and Donna, referring to the episode as "the perfect episode of Doctor Who".

First Roumanian-American Congregation

Church in Manhattan, New York

The First Roumanian-American Congregation, also known as Congregation Shaarey Shomayim (Hebrew: שַׁעֲרֵי שָׁמַיִם, "Gates of Heaven"), or the Roumanishe Shul (Yiddish for "Romanian synagogue"), was an Orthodox Jewish congregation that, for over 100 years, occupied a historic building at 89–93 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Those who organized the congregation in 1885 were part of a substantial wave of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, most of whom settled in the Lower East Side. The Rivington Street building, built around 1860, had previously been a church, then a synagogue, then a church again, and had been extensively remodeled in 1889. It was transformed into a synagogue for a second time when the First Roumanian-American congregation purchased it in 1902 and again remodeled it. The synagogue became famous as the "Cantor's Carnegie Hall", because of its high ceiling, good acoustics, and seating for up to 1,800 people. Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin, Moishe Oysher, Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker were all cantors there. Red Buttons sang in the choir, George Burns was a member, and Edward G. Robinson had his Bar Mitzvah there. The congregation's membership was in the thousands in the 1940s, but by the early 2000s had declined to around 40, as Jews moved out of the Lower East Side. Though its building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the congregation was reluctant to accept outside assistance in maintaining it. In December 2005, water damage was found in the structural beams, and services were moved to the living room of the rabbi's mother. In January 2006, the synagogue's roof collapsed, and the building was demolished two months later. ## Origins ### First Roumanian-American/Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim From 1881 through 1914, approximately 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States from Europe. An estimated three-quarters of them settled in New York City, primarily in the Lower East Side. Over 75,000 of these immigrants were from Romania, where Jews faced antisemitic laws, violence and expulsion. These hardships, combined with low crop yields and economic depression, resulted in 30 percent of the Jews in Romania emigrating to the United States. Romanian Jewish immigrants in New York City gravitated to a fifteen-block area bounded by Allen, Ludlow, Houston and Grand streets. This "Romanian quarter" became the most densely populated part of the Lower East Side, with 1,500 to 1,800 people per block. These immigrants founded the First Roumanian-American congregation, also known as Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim. The origins of the congregation are disputed; its establishment in 1885 may have been a re-organization of a congregation founded in 1860. Located initially close to the Romanian quarter at 70 Hester Street, and later situated at the heart of it with the move to Rivington Street, the synagogue was the preferred house of worship for the quarter's inhabitants. ### Rivington Street building The Rivington Street building was constructed as a Protestant church around 1860 by the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church, which served the area's large German immigrant community. In November 1864 the building was sold to the Orthodox German-Jewish Congregation Shaaray Hashomayim ("Gates of the Heavens"), which had been founded in 1841. Though its Hebrew name was essentially the same as that used by the First Roumanian-American congregation—Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim—which later purchased the building in 1902, the two congregations were unrelated. By the late 1880s, the German-Jewish community had mostly moved from the Lower East Side. In 1889, Congregation Shaaray Hashomayim moved to 216 East 15th Street, near Second Avenue, selling the Rivington Street building to the New York City Church Extension and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which built or purchased churches, missions, and Sunday schools in New York City. The Church Extension and Missionary Society engaged J. Cleaveland Cady to design major alterations to the structure. Cady was, at the time, New York's most famous church architect, and had designed many other public institutional buildings, including university buildings, hospitals and museums. His work included the original Metropolitan Opera building (since demolished), the Richardsonian Romanesque West 78th Street wing of the American Museum of Natural History, and several other buildings for the Church Extension and Missionary Society. The renovations cost approximately \$36,000 (today \$), and included an entirely new Romanesque Revival facade in the reddish-orange brick that Cady also used on several other churches. Renamed the Allen Street Methodist Episcopal Church (or Allen Street Memorial Church), the Rivington Street building's new purpose was to "attract Jewish immigrants seeking conversion". It was, however, unsuccessful in this endeavor. In 1895, the church's pastor stated, "The existence of the church here attracts few. Our audiences are small, and contain almost no Jews." ## Purchase and renovation by First Roumanian-American In 1902, the First Roumanian-American congregation/Congregation Shaarey Shamoyim purchased the Rivington Street building from the Church Extension and Missionary Society to satisfy a need for a larger building to serve the Lower East Side's rapidly growing Romanian-Jewish population. At the time, the property was valued at \$95,000 (today \$). The funds for the purchase were raised from the members of the congregation, and to honor those contributing \$10 or more, names were engraved on one of four marble slabs in the stairway to the main sanctuary. The most generous gift was \$500, at a time when \$10 was two weeks' pay. The congregation also took out two mortgages; one for \$50,000 (today \$) with the Title Insurance Company, and a second for \$30,000 (today \$) with the Church Extension and Missionary Society. The congregation commissioned Charles E. Reid for extensive renovations, at a cost of \$6,000 (today \$). The "eclectic Byzantine" remodeling involved converting it for Jewish use by removing Christian symbols and adding a Torah ark and bimah (central platform from which the Torah is read) at the sanctuary's north end. The renovations retained the original "horseshoe-shaped gallery supported by twelve Ionic columns" and wooden pews with reading shelves (likely from the 1889 Cady renovation), but a number of structural changes were made. Steel beams were added to support the weight of the ark and bimah, the rear wall was re-built and the gallery extended to meet it, two skylights were added (a concave stained glass one and a clear glass one over the ark), and at the front of the building, on top of the shallow (14 feet deep) fourth-story attic, an equally shallow fifth-story attic was added. The completed structure filled almost the entire width of its approximately 70-foot-wide (21 m) by 100-foot-deep (30 m) lot, and seated 1,600 to 1,800. Dedicated in late December 1902, it was the Lower East Side's largest synagogue and only Romanesque one, and it became an "architectural and public showpiece". ## Early activities By 1903 the synagogue was well established on Rivington Street, and, due to its capacity and prominence, was often the site of significant or mass meetings. In April 1903 a service to honor the memory of Reform rabbi and Zionist leader Gustav Gottheil was held there, and a similar service was held for Theodor Herzl the following year. At the latter service, which was boycotted by Orthodox rabbis, Herzl was not eulogized, nor was his name mentioned. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA) held its third annual convention at the synagogue in June 1903, attended by around 100 delegates, and presided over by the organization's president, Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes. The most important resolutions adopted at that meeting were one that deprecated the granting of a get (religious divorce document) to—or allowing subsequent re-marriage by—people who had not first obtained a civil divorce, and the request that congregations with mostly foreign-born members "secure an English-speaking rabbi for the benefit of their American-born English-speaking children". Pereira Mendes spoke in favor of the creation of a committee to bring victims of the Kishinev pogrom to the United States, and against a proposal by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) that the Jewish Sabbath be moved to Sunday. Pereira Mendes also announced that the UOJCA would "unite" with the UAHC and other national "religious, philanthropic, or educational" Jewish organizations in Washington "to discuss the subjects of vital concern to Judaism and Jews", while rejecting the proposition that "the main topic of the discussion at the first congress shall be the immigration problem." At the meeting Albert Lucas also spoke out strongly against attempts by Christian groups to proselytize Jewish children in nurseries and kindergartens. Ostensibly to combat this proselytization, in 1903 the congregation was one of several New York City synagogues that allowed Lucas the use of its premises for free religious classes, "open to all children of the neighborhood". In December 1905 a mass meeting was held at the synagogue to protest massacres of Jews in Russia and mourn their deaths, and the congregation donated \$500 to a fund for the sufferers. In March 1909 Orthodox groups held meetings there to organize opposition to the constitution and make-up of Judah Leon Magnes's Kehilla, an overarching organization intended to represent all of New York's Jews, which lasted until 1922. A mass meeting of local residents and businessmen to combat Lower East Side gangsters was held at the synagogue in 1913. The Rivington Street synagogue was also a preferred venue for airing issues relevant specifically to Romanian-American Jews. In 1905 it was the site of New York City's only memorial service honoring United States Secretary of State John Hay, who had worked on behalf of oppressed Jews in Romania. In 1908, the synagogue hosted a meeting of over 30 religious organizations representing Romanian-American Jews, at which the formation of a federation of those organizations was proposed, and again in 1916 hosted a similar meeting of "two hundred delegates representing thirty-five organizations ... to plan incorporation of the American League of Rumanian Jews". At the latter meeting steps were taken to raise \$1,000,000 (today \$) for oppressed Jews in Romania, and to campaign for their "equal rights and their emancipation from thralldom". The congregation carried out extensive charity campaigns during the Passover season; by 1905 the congregation was distributing wagon-loads of matzos to poor Jews so they could celebrate the holiday. By 1907–1908 membership had risen to 500 (up from 160 in 1900), the Talmud Torah had 250 students, and the synagogue's annual revenues were \$25,000 (today \$). The congregation ran into financial difficulties of its own in 1908, and in October of that year raised funds by selling a number of its Torah scrolls in a public auction. Members who would become famous included George Burns and Bucharest-born Edward G. Robinson, who had his Bar Mitzvah there in 1906. Robinson would later laugh that his propensity for taking the stage was demonstrated when he gave the longest Bar Mitzvah speech in the history of the congregation—"but the men sat still and listened". In 1911 First Roumanian-American celebrated its ten-year jubilee at the synagogue. Guest speakers included United Synagogue of America president Solomon Schechter, Congressman Henry M. Goldfogle, and the principal speaker was William Jay Gaynor, then Mayor of New York City. Membership had grown to 350 families by 1919. The congregational school held classes daily, and had 4 teachers and 300 students. The American Jewish Year Book listed the synagogue's rabbi as Abraham Frachtenberg, a well-known cantor. ## "Cantor's Carnegie Hall" The synagogue's sanctuary had a high ceiling and "opera house" characteristics, and was renowned for its "exquisite" or "magnificent" acoustics. Known as "the Cantor's Carnegie Hall", First Roumanian-American became a center for cantorial music, and many of the greatest cantors of the 20th century led services there. Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zavel Kwartin and Moishe Oysher all sang there, as did Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker before they became famous opera singers. Having a reputation for good cantorial singing had a positive impact on a synagogue's finances; congregations depended on the funds from the sale of tickets for seats on the High Holy Days, and the better the cantor, the greater the attendance. Red Buttons sang at the synagogue with Rosenblatt in 1927, and when visiting the synagogue almost 70 years later could still remember the songs. Though his family actually went to a "small storefront synagogue", Buttons was discovered, at age eight, by a talent scout for Rosenblatt's Coopermans Choir, who heard him singing near the intersection of Fifth Street and Avenue C, at a "pickle stand". Buttons would sing in the choir for three years. Eddie Cantor has also been claimed as a choir member, though this is less likely. Oysher—"the greatest of all popularizers of cantorial singing"—became the synagogue's cantor in 1935, and the congregation's membership peaked in the 1940s, when it numbered in the thousands. In a 1956 interview by Brendan Gill in The New Yorker magazine, Oysher described First Roumanian-American as "the most orthodox Orthodox synagogue in town". Oysher died of a heart attack two years later "at the young age of 51". The week of his death, he had said, "half-jokingly", that he wanted only one person to deliver his eulogy: Chaim Porille, rabbi of the First Roumanian-American Congregation. Porille had been born in Uścieczko (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1898, and moved to the United States in 1927, to serve as rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Providence, Rhode Island. He became rabbi of First Roumanian-American in 1932, a post he filled until 1962, and was a member of the executive board of the Agudath Harabonim. He died in September 1968. ## Subsequent building renovations and appearance in the 1990s In the years following First Roumanian-American's initial purchase and renovation of the Rivington Street building, the congregation made a number of other structural alterations. These included: - 1916–1917: Adding fire escapes on the east and west sides of the building. - 1920s or later: Installing individual theatre-style seats in the gallery. - 1938–1943: Removing the staircase to the fourth floor, leaving access only from the fire escapes. - 1948–1950: Reconstructing the portico with some of the existing stone and brick, and adding new "fireproof steel stairs with terrazzo treads" and light-yellow and blue tinted glass windows on the east and west walls of the sanctuary, and other improvements. - 1964: Adding a kitchen to the basement "for social purposes". In the 1990s, the north-facing orange-red brick facade presented a large, compound arched brick and stone portico, with deeply recessed doors. This arch was "supported by three carved columns, two twisted columns, and a central column with a chevron pattern, each with a Byzantine-style capital", and had a stone coping on top. Carved into the portico arch in capital letters were the words "First Roumanian-American Congregation" in English. Originally there were large rectangular window openings on the ground floor on each side of the portico, each divided into two windows, but these had been bricked in by the 1990s. The second- and third-floor windows above them were originally stained glass but later clear glass, each second-floor window having eight square panes, and each third-floor window six panes topped with an arch. "Ornamental red terra cotta panels" separated the second- and third-floor openings. On the third floor, centered above the portico, was a similar window, this one flanked by two short recessed twisted columns, each "supporting a stone lintel incised with a cupid's-bow ornament". Similar lintels capped three-story pilasters at each corner of the facade, and these pilasters and lintels extended around the northeast and northwest corners. The six-paned windows were each capped with a roundel and three spandrels, "two large and one small", and these retained their original stained glass. The shallow fourth floor was demarcated on the bottom by "a heavy frieze and corbelled brick cornice", which supported "eight round-arched windows with molded brick voussoirs ... massed in a 3-2-3 pattern". By the 1990s these had also been bricked in. The attic on top of the fourth floor, added during the 1902–1903 renovations, was "capped by a band of small red terra-cotta blocks". The sides of the building were faced with plain brick, and flanked by narrow alleys with iron gates at each entrance. The walls generally had plain windows, though there was a round arched one on each side of the fourth floor. One fire escape remained, in the east alley. Inside, the building held a two-story balconied main sanctuary and dining room, in addition to the basement kitchen and bathrooms. The heating system was in a sub-basement. The front ark and wood bimah in the sanctuary were ornate; the red velvet draped ark was elaborately decorated, and the bimah was also decorated, and supported a large bronze candelabra. The sanctuary floor was wood, with wood wainscoting and plaster walls. ### Appearances in popular culture The synagogue building can be seen in the 1956 film Singing in the Dark, starring Oysher, and also starring (and produced by) Joey Adams. The entrance can be seen in the panoramic photograph of the corner of Ludlow and Rivington streets found on the Beastie Boys' 1989 Paul's Boutique album cover foldout, and the building (and Jacob Spiegel) can also be seen in Raphael Nadjari's 2001 film I Am Josh Polonski's Brother. ## Decline Over time the synagogue appealed to a broader constituency than just Roumanian-American Jews. Nevertheless, membership declined during the latter half of the 20th century as the upwardly mobile Jewish population of the Lower East Side moved to north Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. First Roumanian-American was particularly affected: as it was an Orthodox congregation, in order to attend Sabbath services its members had to live within walking distance. In 1980 First Roumanian-American was one of the few congregations on the Lower East Side to still have its own Talmud Torah. This school had been housed in a small building on the east side of the synagogue that had formerly served as the church rectory. The congregation was eventually forced to sell the building, but the new owners retained the school's carved sign. Rabbi Mordecai Mayer, who had led the congregation for 20 years, died in 1981, two days before his 66th birthday. Born in Chortkov (then in Poland), he had graduated from the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, and had emigrated to the United States in 1936. He had, for 40 years, conducted programs on Jewish topics on radio station WEVD, then owned by The Forward. In the 1970s he was a columnist for the Yiddish weekly Algemeiner Journal, and was the author of the English-language books Israel's Wisdom in Modern Life (1949) and Seeing Through Believing (1973). He was succeeded by Jacob Spiegel. In the early 1990s the congregation could still be assured of the required quorum of ten men for the minyan during the week, as local businessmen attended the morning and evening prayers before opening and after closing their shops. By 1996, however, the membership was down to around two dozen, and Spiegel began holding services in the small social hall in the basement, as the main sanctuary had become too expensive to maintain. With the decline in membership, the building deteriorated. In 1997 the congregation received a grant for preservation and repair of the structure from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and the following year received \$4,000 from the Landmarks Conservancy's Sacred Sites program for roof truss repairs. That same year the synagogue building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places at the local level. In the fall of that year Shimon Attie's laser visual work Between Dreams and History was projected onto the synagogue and neighboring buildings for three weeks. Spiegel had a heart attack and died in 2001, leaving charge of the synagogue to the youngest of his three sons, Rabbi Shmuel Spiegel. The other sons, Rabbi Gershon and Rabbi Ari, were, respectively, synagogue president and assistant rabbi. In June 2003 the name "Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel Way" was given collectively to the corner of Rivington Street and Ludlow Street near the synagogue location and the stretch of Rivington in front of the synagogue. The roof had long been in bad shape by the time of Jacob Spiegel's death in 2001 and it was threatening to collapse. In December of that year, Shmuel Spiegel managed to raise \$25,000 for emergency repairs. However, despite offering cholent (the traditional Sabbath lunch stew) at the Sabbath morning kiddush, Spiegel had to search local streets to make the ten men for the minyan. In 2004 the regular membership hovered around 40. Spiegel kept the synagogue running at an annual cost of around \$75,000. ## Collapse On January 22, 2006, the roof of the synagogue caved in, severely damaging the main sanctuary. Joshua Cohen, writing in The Forward in 2008, described the roof as "falling in respectfully, careful not to disturb the local nightclubs, or the wine and cheesery newly opened across the street". No one was injured, and a party to celebrate that fact was later held at the Chasam Sopher Synagogue on Clinton Street. The National Trust for Historic Preservation issued a press release about the collapse, in which it described "older religious properties, like the First Roumanian-American Synagogue" as "national treasures", and stated: > The roof collapse at First Roumanian–American Synagogue this week demonstrates that houses of worship must have access to necessary technical assistance, staff and board training, and the development of new funding sources in order to save these landmarks of spirituality, cultural tradition, and community service. Amy Waterman, executive director of a project to repair and renovate the Eldridge Street Synagogue, noted in The Forward: > Synagogues like the First Roumanian-American Congregation, more familiarly known as the Rumanische shul, were the first spiritual homes for successive waves of European immigrants. They were built more than 100 years ago, and just like the bridges and tunnels of New York City, they're bound to fail if not attended to. Though First Roumanian-American had hosted a wedding as recently as October 30, 2005, the sanctuary had not been in regular use for over 10 years as a result of the difficulty maintaining it. Services had been held instead on a lower floor, and by autumn 2005 the roof was so porous that on Yom Kippur—even in the basement—they prayed "with buckets". After a contractor found water damage in the ceiling beams in early December, the three Spiegel brothers had been holding services in their mother Chana's apartment at 383 Grand Street, where they placed the congregation's 15 Torah scrolls following the roof cave-in. The synagogue's historic ark was also retrieved from the ruins. According to Shmuel Spiegel, "the insurance company [was] playing hardball." Because the building had never been registered as a National Historic Landmark, after the collapse it was demolished on March 3, 2006. The New York City Department of Buildings said that the decision to demolish was the congregation's, but congregational vice president Joshua Shainberg said the Department of Buildings had left them no choice: "The Department of Buildings told us, 'You are to demolish it or we are to demolish it.' There were figures of up to \$1.5 million for demolition." At the time of the building's collapse, the Spiegel brothers vowed that it would be re-built, but not nearly as large: "perhaps 20 feet high by 60 feet deep by 75 feet wide, which would cost about \$2 million to \$3 million". Richard Price described the collapsed building in his novel Lush Life, writing that, after the demolition, only the rear wall with a Star of David in stained glass remained: "The candlesticks were standing up in the rubble, and the whole place looked like an experimental stage set—like Shakespeare in the Park." By October 2007 all that was left was "an empty lot dotted with weeds and crushed bricks". In a 2008 addendum to his book Dough: A Memoir, Mort Zachter described the remains as "a multimillion dollar real estate opportunity masquerading as a vacant, weed-strewn lot". ## Controversy The collapse of the roof, and subsequent destruction of the synagogue, generated widespread concern and criticism among preservationists, who blamed Jacob and Shmuel Spiegel—a charge the family rejected. Julia Vitullo-Martin, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and director of its Center for Rethinking Development, stated that First Roumanian-American's roof collapse and subsequent destruction dramatized an "ongoing though undocumented synagogue crisis—particularly in poor neighborhoods" and revealed a broader problem peculiar to Jewish houses of worship: > Since Judaism, unlike Catholicism, lacks a hierarchy that could keep track of how many [synagogues] are abandoned and demolished, the breadth of the problem is more difficult to ascertain. In the years preceding the building's collapse, the congregation had received offers of assistance from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Lower East Side Conservancy, and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, though reports on the amounts and types of assistance offered varied. The congregation, then under the leadership of Jacob Spiegel, rejected them. Joel Kaplan of the Lower East Side Conservancy stated that the congregation "didn't want the several hundred thousand dollars in landmarking grants that went to other Lower East shuls, money that could have kept the shul in repair". The reasons given for this rejection also varied. According to Vitullo-Martin, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Shmuel Spiegel was not sure why the offers were rejected, as the records were "buried in the rubble". Vitullo-Martin speculated that congregants might have hesitated to agree to a condition that they would need permission from the state for any sale or alteration of the building during the following 20 years. According to The New York Times, Spiegel stated that the repairs required were so extensive that the congregation could not have made them even with this financial assistance. According to The Jewish Week, Spiegel stated that the congregation "didn't want outside interference", was "uncomfortable with the idea of being landmarked and having to answer to landmark guidelines", and was also uncomfortable with making part of the building into a "museum of past glory", as others nearby had done. Zachter writes: > A few blocks away, the Eldridge Street Synagogue survives. Why this synagogue was renovated, and the First Roumanian torn down, is a question for the rabbis and the historians.

Triceratops

Genus of ceratopsid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous

Triceratops (/traɪˈsɛrətɒps/ try-SERR-ə-tops; lit. 'three-horned face') is a genus of chasmosaurine ceratopsian dinosaur that lived during the late Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous period, about 68 to 66 million years ago in what is now western North America. It was one of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs and lived until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago. The name Triceratops, which literally means 'three-horned face', is derived from the Greek words trí- () meaning 'three', kéras () meaning 'horn', and ṓps () meaning 'face'. Bearing a large bony frill, three horns on the skull, and a large, four-legged body, exhibiting convergent evolution with bovines and rhinoceroses, Triceratops is one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs and the most well-known ceratopsian. It was also one of the largest, up to 8–9 metres (26–30 ft) long and 5–9 metric tons (5.5–9.9 short tons) in body mass. It shared the landscape with and was most likely preyed upon by Tyrannosaurus, though it is less certain that two adults would battle in the fanciful manner often depicted in museum displays and popular media. The functions of the frills and three distinctive facial horns on its head have long inspired countless debates. Traditionally, these have been viewed as defensive weapons against predators. More recent interpretations find it probable that these features were primarily used in species identification, courtship, and dominance display, much like the antlers and horns of modern ungulates. Triceratops was traditionally placed within the "short-frilled" ceratopsids, but modern cladistic studies show it to be a member of Chasmosaurinae, which usually have long frills. Two species, T. horridus and T. prorsus, are considered valid today. Seventeen different species, however, have been named throughout history. Research published in 2010 concluded that the contemporaneous Torosaurus, a ceratopsid long regarded as a separate genus, represents Triceratops in its mature form. This view has still been highly disputed and much more data is needed to settle this ongoing debate. Triceratops has been documented by numerous remains collected since the genus was first described in 1889 by American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. Specimens representing life stages from hatchling to adult have been found. As the archetypal ceratopsian, Triceratops is one of the most beloved, popular dinosaurs and has been featured in numerous films, postage stamps, and many other types of media. ## Discovery and identification The first named fossil specimen now attributed to Triceratops is a pair of brow horns attached to a skull roof that were found by George Lyman Cannon near Denver, Colorado, in the spring of 1887. This specimen was sent to Othniel Charles Marsh, who believed that the formation from which it came from dated from the Pliocene and that the bones belonged to a particularly large and unusual bison, which he named Bison alticornis. He realized that there were horned dinosaurs by the next year, which saw his publication of the genus Ceratops from fragmentary remains, but he still believed B. alticornis to be a Pliocene mammal. It took a third and much more complete skull to fully change his mind. Although not confidentially assignable, fossils possibly belonging to Triceratops were described as two taxa, Agathaumas sylvestris and Polyonax mortuarius, in 1872 and 1874, respectively, by Marsh's archrival Edward Drinker Cope. Agathaumas was named based on a pelvis, several vertebrae, and a few ribs collected by Fielding Bradford Meek and Henry Martyn Bannister near the Green River of southeastern Wyoming from layers coming from the Maastrichtian Lance Formation. Due to the fragmentary nature of the remains, it can only confidently be assigned to Ceratopsidae. Polyonax mortuarius was collected by Cope himself in 1873 from northeastern Colorado, possibly coming from the Maastrichtian Denver Formation. The fossils only consisted of fragmentary horn cores, 3 dorsal vertebrae, and fragmentary limb elements. Polyonax has the same issue as Agathaumas, with the fragmentary remains non-assignable beyond Ceratopsidae. The Triceratops holotype, YPM 1820, was collected in 1888 from the Lance Formation of Wyoming by fossil hunter John Bell Hatcher, but Marsh initially described this specimen as another species of Ceratops. Cowboy Edmund B. Wilson had been startled by the sight of a monstrous skull poking out of the side of a ravine. He tried to recover it by throwing a lasso around one of the horns. When it broke off, the skull tumbling to the bottom of the cleft, Wilson brought the horn to his boss. His boss was rancher and avid fossil collector Charles Arthur Guernsey, who just so happened to show it to Hatcher. Marsh subsequently ordered Hatcher to locate and salvage the skull. The holotype was first named Ceratops horridus. When further preparation uncovered the third nose horn, Marsh changed his mind and gave the piece the new generic name Triceratops (lit. 'three horn face'), accepting his Bison alticornis as another species of Ceratops. It would, however, later be added to Triceratops. The sturdy nature of the animal's skull has ensured that many examples have been preserved as fossils, allowing variations between species and individuals to be studied. Triceratops remains have subsequently been found in Montana and South Dakota (and more in Colorado and Wyoming), as well as the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. ### Species After Triceratops was described, between 1889 and 1891, Hatcher collected another thirty-one of its skulls with great effort. The first species had been named T. horridus by Marsh. Its specific name was derived from the Latin word meaning "rough" or "rugose", perhaps referring to the type specimen's rough texture, later identified as an aged individual. The additional skulls varied to a lesser or greater degree from the original holotype. This variation is unsurprising, given that Triceratops skulls are large three-dimensional objects from individuals of different ages and both sexes that which were subjected to different amounts and directions of pressure during fossilization. In the first attempt to understand the many species, Richard Swann Lull found two groups, although he did not say how he distinguished them. One group composed of T. horridus, T. prorsus, and T. brevicornus ('the short-horned'). The other composed of T. elatus and T. calicornis. Two species (T. serratus and T. flabellatus) stood apart from these groups. By 1933, alongside his revision of the landmark 1907 Hatcher–Marsh–Lull monograph of all known ceratopsians, he retained his two groups and two unaffiliated species, with a third lineage of T. obtusus and T. hatcheri ('Hatcher's') that was characterized by a very small nasal horn. T. horridus–T. prorsus–T. brevicornus was now thought to be the most conservative lineage, with an increase in skull size and a decrease in nasal horn size. T. elatus–T. calicornis was defined by having large brow horns and small nasal horns. Charles Mortram Sternberg made one modification by adding T. eurycephalus ('the wide-headed') and suggesting that it linked the second and third lineages closer together than they were to the T. horridus lineage. With time, the idea that the differing skulls might be representative of individual variation within one (or two) species gained popularity. In 1986, John Ostrom and Peter Wellnhofer published a paper in which they proposed that there was only one species, Triceratops horridus. Part of their rationale was that there are generally only one or two species of any large animal in a region. To their findings, Thomas Lehman added the old Lull–Sternberg lineages combined with maturity and sexual dimorphism, suggesting that the T. horridus–T. prorsus–T. brevicornus lineage was composed of females, the T. calicornis–T. elatus lineage was made up of males, and the T. obtusus–T. hatcheri lineage was of pathologic old males. These findings were contested a few years later by paleontologist Catherine Forster, who reanalyzed Triceratops material more comprehensively and concluded that the remains fell into two species, T. horridus and T. prorsus, although the distinctive skull of T. ("Nedoceratops") hatcheri differed enough to warrant a separate genus. She found that T. horridus and several other species belonged together and that T. prorsus and T. brevicornus stood alone. Since there were many more specimens in the first group, she suggested that this meant the two groups were two species. It is still possible to interpret the differences as representing a single species with sexual dimorphism. In 2009, John Scannella and Denver Fowler supported the separation of T. prorsus and T. horridus, noting that the two species are also separated stratigraphically within the Hell Creek Formation, indicating that they did not live together at the same time. #### Valid species - T. horridus (Marsh, 1889) Marsh, 1889 (originally Ceratops) (type species) - T. prorsus Marsh, 1890 #### Synonyms and doubtful species Some of the following species are synonyms, as indicated in parentheses ("=T. horridus" or "=T. prorsus"). All the others are each considered a nomen dubium (lit. 'dubious name') because they are based on remains too poor or incomplete to be distinguished from pre-existing Triceratops species. - T. albertensis C. M. Sternberg, 1949 - T. alticornis (Marsh 1887) Hatcher, Marsh, and Lull, 1907 [originally Bison alticornis, Marsh 1887, and Ceratops alticornis, Marsh 1888] - T. brevicornus Hatcher, 1905 (=T. prorsus) - T. calicornis Marsh, 1898 (=T. horridus) - T. elatus Marsh, 1891 (=T. horridus) - T. eurycephalus Schlaikjer, 1935 - T. flabellatus Marsh, 1889 (= Sterrholophus Marsh, 1891) (=T. horridus) - T. galeus Marsh, 1889 - T. hatcheri (Hatcher & Lull 1905) Lull, 1933 (contentious; see Nedoceratops below) - T. ingens Marsh vide Lull, 1915 - T. maximus Brown, 1933 - T. mortuarius (Cope, 1874) Kuhn, 1936 (nomen dubium; originally Polyonax mortuarius) - T. obtusus Marsh, 1898 (=T. horridus) - T. serratus Marsh, 1890 (=T. horridus) - T. sulcatus Marsh, 1890 - T. sylvestris (Cope, 1872) Kuhn, 1936 (nomen dubium; originally Agathaumas sylvestris) ## Description ### Size Triceratops was a very large animal, reaching 8–9 metres (26–30 ft) in length and weighing 5–9 metric tons (5.5–9.9 short tons). A specimen of T. horridus named Kelsey measured 6.7–7.3 meters (22–24 ft) long, has a 2-meter (6.5 ft) skull, stood about 2.3 meters (7.5 ft) tall, and was estimated by the Black Hills Institute to weigh approximately 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons). ### Skull Like all chasmosaurines, Triceratops had a large skull relative to its body size, among the largest of all land animals. The largest-known skull, specimen MWC 7584 (formerly BYU 12183), is estimated to have been 2.5 meters (8.2 ft) in length when complete and could reach almost a third of the length of the entire animal. The front of the head was equipped with a large beak in front of its teeth. The core of the top beak was formed by a special rostral bone. Behind it, the premaxillae bones were located, embayed from behind by very large, circular nostrils. In chasmosaurines, the premaxillae met on their midline in a complex bone plate, the rear edge of which was reinforced by the "narial strut". From the base of this strut, a triangular process jutted out into the nostril. Triceratops differs from most relatives in that this process was hollowed out on the outer side. Behind the toothless premaxilla, the maxilla bore thirty-six to forty tooth positions, in which three to five teeth per position were vertically stacked. The teeth were closely appressed, forming a "dental battery" curving to the inside. The skull bore a single horn on the snout above the nostrils. In Triceratops, the nose horn is sometimes recognisable as a separate ossification, the epinasal. The skull also featured a pair of supraorbital "brow" horns approximately 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, with one above each eye. The jugal bones pointed downward at the rear sides of the skull and were capped by separate epijugals. With Triceratops, these were not particularly large and sometimes touched the quadratojugals. The bones of the skull roof were fused and by a folding of the frontal bones, a "double" skull roof was created. In Triceratops, some specimens show a fontanelle, an opening in the upper roof layer. The cavity between the layers invaded the bone cores of the brow horns. At the rear of the skull, the outer squamosal bones and the inner parietal bones grew into a relatively short, bony frill, adorned with epoccipitals in young specimens. These were low triangular processes on the frill edge, representing separate skin ossifications or osteoderms. Typically, with Triceratops specimens, there are two epoccipitals present on each parietal bone, with an additional central process on their border. Each squamosal bone had five processes. Most other ceratopsids had large parietal fenestrae, openings in their frills, but those of Triceratops were noticeably solid, unless the genus Torosaurus represents mature Triceratops individuals, which it most likely does not. Under the frill, at the rear of the skull, a huge occipital condyle, up to 106 millimeters (4.2 in) in diameter, connected the head to the neck. The lower jaws were elongated and met at their tips in a shared epidentary bone, the core of the toothless lower beak. In the dentary bone, the tooth battery curved to the outside to meet the battery of the upper jaw. At the rear of the lower jaw, the articular bone was exceptionally wide, matching the general width of the jaw joint. T. horridus can be distinguished from T. prorsus by having a shallower snout. ### Postcranial skeleton Chasmosaurines showed little variation in their postcranial skeleton. The skeleton of Triceratops is markedly robust. Both Triceratops species possessed a very sturdy build, with strong limbs, short hands with three hooves each, and short feet with four hooves each. The vertebral column consisted of ten neck, twelve back, ten sacral, and about forty-five tail vertebrae. The front neck vertebrae were fused into a syncervical. Traditionally, this was assumed to have incorporated the first three vertebrae, thus implying that the frontmost atlas was very large and sported a neural spine. Later interpretations revived an old hypothesis by John Bell Hatcher that, at the very front, a vestige of the real atlas can be observed, the syncervical then consisting of four vertebrae. The vertebral count mentioned is adjusted to this view. In Triceratops, the neural spines of the neck are constant in height and don't gradually slope upwards. Another peculiarity is that the neck ribs only begin to lengthen with the ninth cervical vertebra. The rather short and high vertebrae of the back were, in its middle region, reinforced by ossified tendons running along the tops of the neural arches. The straight sacrum was long and adult individuals show a fusion of all sacral vertebrae. In Triceratops the first four and last two sacrals had transverse processes, connecting the vertebral column to the pelvis, that were fused at their distal ends. Sacrals seven and eight had longer processes, causing the sacrum to have an oval profile in top view. On top of the sacrum, a neural plate was present formed by a fusion of the neural spines of the second through fifth vertebrae. Triceratops had a large pelvis with a long ilium. The ischium was curved downwards. The foot was short with four functional toes. The phalangeal formula of the foot is 2-3-4-5-0. Although certainly quadrupedal, the posture of horned dinosaurs has long been the subject of some debate. Originally, it was believed that the front legs of the animal had to be sprawling at a considerable angle from the thorax in order to better bear the weight of the head. This stance can be seen in paintings by Charles Knight and Rudolph Zallinger. Ichnological evidence in the form of trackways from horned dinosaurs and recent reconstructions of skeletons (both physical and digital) seem to show that Triceratops and other ceratopsids maintained an upright stance during normal locomotion, with the elbows flexed to behind and slightly bowed out, in an intermediate state between fully upright and fully sprawling, comparable to the modern rhinoceros. The hands and forearms of Triceratops retained a fairly primitive structure when compared to other quadrupedal dinosaurs, such as thyreophorans and many sauropods. In those two groups, the forelimbs of quadrupedal species were usually rotated so that the hands faced forward with palms backward ("pronated") as the animals walked. Triceratops, like other ceratopsians and related quadrupedal ornithopods (together forming the Cerapoda), walked with most of their fingers pointing out and away from the body, the original condition for dinosaurs. This was also retained by bipedal forms, like theropods. In Triceratops, the weight of the body was carried by only the first three fingers of the hand, while digits 4 and 5 were vestigial and lacked claws or hooves. The phalangeal formula of the hand is 2-3-4-3-1, meaning that the first or innermost finger of the forelimb has two bones, the next has three, the next has four, etc. ### Skin Preserved skin from Triceratops is known. This skin consist of large scales, some of which exceed 100 millimetres (3.9 in) across, which have conical projections rising from their center. A preserved piece of skin from the frill of a specimen is also known, which consists of small polygonal basement scales. ## Classification Triceratops is the best-known genus of Ceratopsidae, a family of large, mostly North American ceratopsians. The exact relationship of Triceratops among the other ceratopsids has been debated over the years. Confusion stemmed mainly from the combination of a short, solid frill (similar to that of Centrosaurinae), with long brow horns (more akin to Chasmosaurinae). In the first overview of ceratopsians, R. S. Lull hypothesized the existence of two lineages, one of Monoclonius and Centrosaurus leading to Triceratops, the other with Ceratops and Torosaurus, making Triceratops a centrosaurine as the group is understood today. Later revisions supported this view when Lawrence Lambe, in 1915, formally describing the first, short-frilled group as Centrosaurinae (including Triceratops), and the second, long-frilled group as Chasmosaurinae. In 1949, Charles Mortram Sternberg was the first to question this position, proposing instead that Triceratops was more closely related to Arrhinoceratops and Chasmosaurus based on skull and horn features, making Triceratops a chasmosaurine ("ceratopsine" in his usage) genus. He was largely ignored, with John Ostrom and later David Norman placing Triceratops within the Centrosaurinae. Subsequent discoveries and analyses, however, proved the correctness of Sternberg's view on the position of Triceratops, with Thomas Lehman defining both subfamilies in 1990 and diagnosing Triceratops as "ceratopsine" on the basis of several morphological features. Apart from the one feature of a shortened frill, Triceratops shares no derived traits with centrosaurines. Further research by Peter Dodson, including a 1990 cladistic analysis and a 1993 study using resistant-fit theta-rho analysis, or RFTRA (a morphometric technique which systematically measures similarities in skull shape), reinforces Triceratops' placement as a chasmosaurine. The cladogram below follows Longrich (2014), who named a new species of Pentaceratops, and included nearly all species of chasmosaurine. For many years after its discovery, the deeper evolutionary origins of Triceratops and its close relatives remained largely obscure. In 1922, the newly discovered Protoceratops was seen as its ancestor by Henry Fairfield Osborn, but many decades passed before additional findings came to light. Recent years have been fruitful for the discovery of several antecedents of Triceratops. Zuniceratops, the earliest-known ceratopsian with brow horns, was described in the late 1990s, and Yinlong, the first known Jurassic ceratopsian, was described in 2005. These new finds have been vital in illustrating the origins of ceratopsians in general, suggesting an Asian origin in the Jurassic and the appearance of truly horned ceratopsians by the beginning of the Late Cretaceous in North America. In phylogenetic taxonomy, the genus Triceratops has been used as a reference point in the definition of Dinosauria. Dinosaurs have been designated as all descendants of the most recent common ancestor of Triceratops and modern birds. Furthermore,Ornithischia has been defined as those dinosaurs more closely related to Triceratops than to modern birds. ## Paleobiology Although Triceratops is commonly portrayed as a herding animal, there is currently little evidence to suggest that they lived in herds. While several other ceratopsians are known from bone beds preserving bones from two to hundreds or even thousands of individuals, there is currently only one documented bonebed dominated by Triceratops bones: a site in southeastern Montana with the remains of three juveniles. It may be significant that only juveniles were present. In 2012, a group of three Triceratops in relatively complete condition, each of varying sizes from a full-grown adult to a small juvenile, were found near Newcastle, Wyoming. The remains are currently under excavation by paleontologist Peter Larson and a team from the Black Hills Institute. It is believed that the animals were traveling as a family unit, but it remains unknown if the group consists of a mated pair and their offspring, or two females and a juvenile they were caring for. The remains also show signs of predation or scavenging from Tyrannosaurus, particularly on the largest specimen, with the bones of the front limbs showing breakage and puncture wounds from Tyrannosaurus teeth. In 2020, Illies and Fowler described the co-ossified distal caudal vertebrae of Triceratops. According to them, this pathology could have arisen after one Triceratops accidentally stepped on the tail of another member of the herd. For many years, Triceratops finds were known only from solitary individuals. These remains are very common. For example, Bruce Erickson, a paleontologist of the Science Museum of Minnesota, has reported having seen 200 specimens of T. prorsus in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. Similarly, Barnum Brown claimed to have seen over 500 skulls in the field. Because Triceratops teeth, horn fragments, frill fragments, and other skull fragments are such abundant fossils in the Lancian faunal stage of the late Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous, 66 mya) of western North America, it is regarded as one of the dominant herbivores of the time, if not the most dominant. In 1986, Robert Bakker estimated it as making up five sixths of the large dinosaur fauna at the end of the Cretaceous. Unlike most animals, skull fossils are far more common than postcranial bones for Triceratops, suggesting that the skull had an unusually high preservation potential. Analysis of the endocranial anatomy of Triceratops suggest its sense of smell was poor compared to that of other dinosaurs. Its ears were attuned to low frequency sounds, given the short cochlear lengths recorded in an analysis by Sakagami et al,. This same study also suggests that Triceratops held its head about 45 degrees to the ground, an angle which would showcase the horns and frill most effectively that simultaneously allowed the animal to take advantage of food through grazing. A 2022 study by Wiemann and colleagues of various dinosaur genera, including Triceratops, suggests that it had an ectothermic (cold blooded) or gigantothermic metabolism, on par with that of modern reptiles. This was uncovered using the spectroscopy of lipoxidation signals, which are byproducts of oxidative phosphorylation and correlate with metabolic rates. They suggested that such metabolisms may have been common for ornithischian dinosaurs in general, with the group evolving towards ectothermy from an ancestor with an endothermic (warm blooded) metabolism. ### Dentition and diet Triceratops were herbivorous and, because of their low slung head, their primary food was probably low growing vegetation, although they may have been able to knock down taller plants with their horns, beak, and sheer bulk. The jaws were tipped with a deep, narrow beak, believed to have been better at grasping and plucking than biting. Triceratops teeth were arranged in groups called batteries, which contained 36 to 40 tooth columns in each side of each jaw and 3 to 5 stacked teeth per column, depending on the size of the animal. This gives a range of 432 to 800 teeth, of which only a fraction were in use at any given time (as tooth replacement was continuous throughout the life of the animal). They functioned by shearing in a vertical to near-vertical orientation. The great size and numerous teeth of Triceratops suggests that they ate large volumes of fibrous plant material. Some researchers suggest it ate palms and cycads and others suggest it ate ferns, which then grew in prairies. ### Functions of the horns and frill There has been much speculation over the functions of Triceratops' head adornments. The two main theories have revolved around use in combat and in courtship display, with the latter now thought to be the most likely primary function. Early on, Lull postulated that the frills may have served as anchor points for the jaw muscles to aid chewing by allowing increased size and power for the muscles. This has been put forward by other authors over the years, but later studies do not find evidence of large muscle attachments on the frill bones. Triceratops were long thought to have used their horns and frills in combat with large predators, such as Tyrannosaurus, the idea being discussed first by Charles H. Sternberg in 1917 and 70 years later by Robert Bakker. There is evidence that Tyrannosaurus did have aggressive head-on encounters with Triceratops, based on partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal. The bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. Which animal was the aggressor, however, is unknown. Paleontologist Peter Dodson estimates that, in a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops had the upper hand and would successfully defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns. Tyrannosaurus is also known to have fed on Triceratops, as shown by a heavily tooth-scored Triceratops ilium and sacrum. In addition to combat with predators using its horns, Triceratops are popularly shown engaging each other in combat with horns locked. While studies show that such activity would be feasible, if unlike that of present-day horned animals, there is disagreement about whether they did so. Although pitting, holes, lesions, and other damage on Triceratops skulls (and the skulls of other ceratopsids) are often attributed to horn damage in combat, a 2006 study finds no evidence for horn thrust injuries causing these forms of damage (with there being no evidence of infection or healing). Instead, non-pathological bone resorption, or unknown bone diseases, are suggested as causes. A newer study compared incidence rates of skull lesions and periosteal reaction in Triceratops and Centrosaurus, showing that these were consistent with Triceratops using its horns in combat and the frill being adapted as a protective structure, while lower pathology rates in Centrosaurus may indicate visual use over physical use of cranial ornamentation or a form of combat focused on the body rather than the head. The frequency of injury was found to be 14% in Triceratops. The researchers also concluded that the damage found on the specimens in the study was often too localized to be caused by bone disease. Histological examination reveals that the frill of Triceratops is composed of fibrolamellar bone. This contains fibroblasts that play a critical role in wound healing and is capable of rapidly depositing bone during remodeling. One skull was found with a hole in the jugal bone, apparently a puncture wound sustained while the animal was alive, as indicated by signs of healing. The hole has a diameter close to that of the distal end of a Triceratops horn. This and other apparent healed wounds in the skulls of ceratopsians has been cited as evidence of non-fatal intraspecific competition in these dinosaurs. Another specimen, referred to as "Big John", has a similar fenestra to the squamosal caused by what appears to be another Triceratops horn and the squamosal bone shows signs of significant healing, further vindicating the hypothesis that this ceratopsian used its horns for intra-specific combat. The large frill also may have helped to increase body area to regulate body temperature. A similar theory has been proposed regarding the plates of Stegosaurus, although this use alone would not account for the bizarre and extravagant variation seen in different members of Ceratopsidae, which would rather support the sexual display theory. The theory that frills functioned as a sexual display was first proposed by Davitashvili in 1961 and has gained increasing acceptance since. Evidence that visual display was important, either in courtship or other social behavior, can be seen in the ceratopsians differing markedly in their adornments, making each species highly distinctive. Also, modern living creatures with such displays of horns and adornments use them similarly. A 2006 study of the smallest Triceratops skull, ascertained to be a juvenile, shows the frill and horns developed at a very early age, predating sexual development and probably important for visual communication and species recognition in general. The use of the exaggerated structures to enable dinosaurs to recognize their own species has been questioned, as no such function exists for such structures in modern species. ### Growth and ontogeny In 2006, the first extensive ontogenetic study of Triceratops was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. The study, by John R. Horner and Mark Goodwin, found that individuals of Triceratops could be divided into four general ontogenetic groups: babies, juveniles, subadults, and adults. With a total number of 28 skulls studied, the youngest was only 38 centimeters (15 in) long. Ten of the 28 skulls could be placed in order in a growth series with one representing each age. Each of the four growth stages were found to have identifying features. Multiple ontogenetic trends were discovered, including the size reduction of the epoccipitals, development and reorientation of postorbital horns, and hollowing out of the horns. #### Torosaurus as growth stage of Triceratops Torosaurus is a ceratopsid genus first identified from a pair of skulls in 1891, two years after the identification of Triceratops by Othneil Charles Marsh. The genus Torosaurus resembles Triceratops in geological age, distribution, anatomy, and size, so it has been recognised as a close relative. Its distinguishing features are an elongated skull and the presence of two ovular fenestrae in the frill. Paleontologists investigating dinosaur ontogeny in Montana's Hell Creek Formation have recently presented evidence that the two represent a single genus. John Scannella, in a paper presented in Bristol at the conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (September 25, 2009), reclassified Torosaurus as especially mature Triceratops individuals, perhaps representing a single sex. Horner, Scannella's mentor at Bozeman Campus, Montana State University, noted that ceratopsian skulls consist of metaplastic bone. A characteristic of metaplastic bone is that it lengthens and shortens over time, extending and resorbing to form new shapes. Significant variety is seen even in those skulls already identified as Triceratops, Horner said, "where the horn orientation is backwards in juveniles and forward in adults". Approximately 50% of all subadult Triceratops skulls have two thin areas in the frill that correspond with the placement of "holes" in Torosaurus skulls, suggesting that holes developed to offset the weight that would otherwise have been added as maturing Triceratops individuals grew longer frills. A paper describing these findings in detail was published in July 2010 by Scannella and Horner. It formally argues that Torosaurus and the similar contemporary Nedoceratops are synonymous with Triceratops. The assertion has since ignited much debate. Andrew Farke had, in 2006, stressed that no systematic differences could be found between Torosaurus and Triceratops, apart from the frill. He nevertheless disputed Scannella's conclusion by arguing in 2011 that the proposed morphological changes required to "age" a Triceratops into a Torosaurus would be without precedent among ceratopsids. Such changes would include the growth of additional epoccipitals, reversion of bone texture from an adult to immature type and back to adult again, and growth of frill holes at a later stage than usual. A study by Nicholas Longrich and Daniel Field analyzed 35 specimens of both Triceratops and Torosaurus. The authors concluded that Triceratops individuals too old to be considered immature forms are represented in the fossil record, as are Torosaurus individuals too young to be considered fully mature adults. The synonymy of Triceratops and Torosaurus cannot be supported, they said, without more convincing intermediate forms than Scannella and Horner initially produced. Scannella's Triceratops specimen with a hole on its frill, they argued, could represent a diseased or malformed individual rather than a transitional stage between an immature Triceratops and mature Torosaurus form. #### Other genera as growth stages of Triceratops Opinion has varied on the validity of a separate genus for Nedoceratops. Scannella and Horner regarded it as an intermediate growth stage between Triceratops and Torosaurus. Farke, in his 2011 redescription of the only known skull, concluded that it was an aged individual of its own valid taxon, Nedoceratops hatcheri. Longrich and Fields also did not consider it a transition between Torosaurus and Triceratops, suggesting that the frill holes were pathological. As described above, Scannella had argued in 2010 that Nedoceratops should be considered a synonym of Triceratops. Farke (2011) maintained that it represents a valid distinct genus. Longrich agreed with Scannella about Nedoceratops and made a further suggestion that the recently described Ojoceratops was likewise a synonym. The fossils, he argued, are indistinguishable from the Triceratops horridus specimens that were previously attributed to the defunct species Triceratops serratus. Longrich observed that another newly described genus, Tatankaceratops, displayed a strange mix of characteristics already found in adult and juvenile Triceratops. Rather than representing a distinct genus, Tatankaceratops could as easily represent a dwarf Triceratops or a Triceratops individual with a developmental disorder that caused it to stop growing prematurely. ## Paleoecology Triceratops lived during the Late Cretaceous of western North America, its fossils coming from the Evanston Formation, Scollard Formation, Laramie Formation, Lance Formation, Denver Formation, and Hell Creek Formation. These fossil formations date back to the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which has been dated to 66 ± 0.07 million years ago. Many animals and plants have been found in these formations, but mostly from the Lance Formation and Hell Creek Formation. Triceratops was one of the last ceratopsian genera to appear before the end of the Mesozoic. The related Torosaurus and more distantly related diminutive Leptoceratops were also present, though their remains have been rarely encountered. Theropods from these formations include genera of dromaeosaurids, tyrannosaurids, ornithomimids, troodontids, avialans, and caenagnathids. Dromaeosaurids from the Hell Creek Formation are Acheroraptor and Dakotaraptor. Indeterminate dromaeosaurs are known from other fossil formations. Common teeth previously referred to Dromaeosaurus and Saurornitholestes were considered to be those of Acheroraptor. The tyrannosaurids from the formation are Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus, although the former is most likely a junior synonym of the latter. Among ornithomimids are the genera Struthiomimus and Ornithomimus. An undescribed animal named "Orcomimus" could be from the formation. Troodontids are only represented by Pectinodon and Paronychodon in the Hell Creek Formation with a possible species of Troodon from the Lance Formation. One species of unknown coelurosaur is known from teeth in the Hell Creek and similar formations by a single species, Richardoestesia. Only three oviraptorosaurs are from the Hell Creek Formation: Anzu, Leptorhynchos and a giant species of caenagnathid, very similar to Gigantoraptor, from South Dakota. However, only fossilized foot prints were discovered. The avialans known from the formation are Avisaurus, multiple species of Brodavis, and several other species of hesperornithoforms, as well as several species of true birds, including Cimolopteryx. Ornithischians are abundant in the Scollard, Laramie, Lance, Denver, and Hell Creek Formation. The main groups of ornithischians are ankylosaurians, ornithopods, ceratopsians, and pachycephalosaurians. Three ankylosaurians are known: Ankylosaurus, Denversaurus, and possibly a species of Edmontonia or an undescribed genus. Multiple genera of ceratopsians are known from the formation other than Triceratops. These include the leptoceratopsid Leptoceratops and the chasmosaurine ceratopsids Torosaurus, Nedoceratops, and Tatankaceratops. Ornithopods are common in the Hell Creek Formation and are known from several species of the thescelosaurine Thescelosaurus and the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus. Several pachycephalosaurians have been found in the Hell Creek Formation and in similar formations. Among them are the derived pachycephalosaurids Stygimoloch, Dracorex, Pachycephalosaurus, Sphaerotholus, and an undescribed specimen from North Dakota. The first two might be junior synonyms of Pachycephalosaurus. Mammals are plentiful in the Hell Creek Formation. Groups represented include multituberculates, metatherians, and eutherians. The multituberculates represented include Paracimexomys, the cimolomyids Paressonodon, Meniscoessus, Essonodon, Cimolomys, Cimolodon, and Cimexomys, and the neoplagiaulacids Mesodma and Neoplagiaulax. The metatherians are represented by the alphadontids Alphadon, Protalphodon, and Turgidodon, the pediomyids Pediomys, Protolambda, and Leptalestes, the stagodontid Didelphodon, the deltatheridiid Nanocuris, the herpetotheriid Nortedelphys, and the glasbiid Glasbius. A few eutherians are known, being represented by Alostera, Protungulatum, the cimolestids Cimolestes and Batodon, the gypsonictopsid Gypsonictops , and the possible nyctitheriid Paranyctoides. ## Cultural significance Triceratops is the official state fossil of South Dakota. It is also the official state dinosaur of Wyoming. In 1942, Charles R. Knight painted a mural incorporating a confrontation between a Tyrannosaurus and a Triceratops in the Field Museum of Natural History for the National Geographic Society, establishing them as enemies in the popular imagination. Paleontologist Robert Bakker said of the imagined rivalry between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, "No matchup between predator and prey has ever been more dramatic. It's somehow fitting that those two massive antagonists lived out their co-evolutionary belligerence through the last days of the last epoch of the Age of Dinosaurs."

Dreadnought

Early 20th century battleship type

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, had such an effect when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. As dreadnoughts became a crucial symbol of national power, the arrival of these new warships renewed the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany. Dreadnought races sprang up around the world, including in South America, lasting up to the beginning of World War I. Successive designs increased rapidly in size and made use of improvements in armament, armour, and propulsion throughout the dreadnought era. Within five years, new battleships outclassed Dreadnought herself. These more powerful vessels were known as "super-dreadnoughts". Most of the original dreadnoughts were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, but many of the newer super-dreadnoughts continued serving throughout World War II. Dreadnought-building consumed vast resources in the early 20th century, but there was only one battle between large dreadnought fleets. At the Battle of Jutland in 1916, the British and German navies clashed with no decisive result. The term "dreadnought" gradually dropped from use after World War I, especially after the Washington Naval Treaty, as virtually all remaining battleships shared dreadnought characteristics; it can also be used to describe battlecruisers, the other type of ship resulting from the dreadnought revolution. ## Origins The distinctive all-big-gun armament of the dreadnought was developed in the first years of the 20th century as navies sought to increase the range and power of the armament of their battleships. The typical battleship of the 1890s, now known as the "pre-dreadnought", had a main armament of four heavy guns of 12-inch (300 mm) calibre, a secondary armament of six to eighteen quick-firing guns of between 4.7-and-7.5-inch (119 and 191 mm) calibre, and other smaller weapons. This was in keeping with the prevailing theory of naval combat that battles would initially be fought at some distance, but the ships would then approach to close range for the final blows (as they did in the Battle of Manila Bay), when the shorter-range, faster-firing guns would prove most useful. Some designs had an intermediate battery of 8-inch (203 mm) guns. Serious proposals for an all-big-gun armament were circulated in several countries by 1903. All-big-gun designs commenced almost simultaneously in three navies. In 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy authorized construction of Satsuma, originally designed with twelve 12-inch (305 mm) guns. Work began on her construction in May 1905. The Royal Navy began the design of HMS Dreadnought in January 1905, and she was laid down in October of the same year. Finally, the US Navy gained authorization for USS Michigan, carrying eight 12-inch guns, in March 1905, with construction commencing in December 1906. The move to all-big-gun designs was accomplished because a uniform, heavy-calibre armament offered advantages in both firepower and fire control, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 showed that future naval battles could, and likely would, be fought at long distances. The newest 12-inch (305 mm) guns had longer range and fired heavier shells than a gun of 10-or-9.2-inch (254 or 234 mm) calibre. Another possible advantage was fire control; at long ranges guns were aimed by observing the splashes caused by shells fired in salvoes, and it was difficult to interpret different splashes caused by different calibres of gun. There is still debate as to whether this feature was important. ### Long-range gunnery In naval battles of the 1890s the decisive weapon was the medium-calibre, typically 6-inch (152 mm), quick-firing gun firing at relatively short range; at the Battle of the Yalu River in 1894, the victorious Japanese did not commence firing until the range had closed to 4,300 yards (3,900 m), and most of the fighting occurred at 2,200 yards (2,000 m). At these ranges, lighter guns had good accuracy, and their high rate of fire delivered high volumes of ordnance on the target, known as the "hail of fire". Naval gunnery was too inaccurate to hit targets at a longer range. By the early 20th century, British and American admirals expected future battleships would engage at longer distances. Newer models of torpedo had longer ranges. For instance, in 1903, the US Navy ordered a design of torpedo effective to 4,000 yards (3,700 m). Both British and American admirals concluded that they needed to engage the enemy at longer ranges. In 1900, Admiral Fisher, commanding the Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet, ordered gunnery practice with 6-inch guns at 6,000 yards (5,500 m). By 1904 the US Naval War College was considering the effects on battleship tactics of torpedoes with a range of 7,000 to 8,000 yards (6,400 to 7,300 m). The range of light and medium-calibre guns was limited, and accuracy declined badly at longer range. At longer ranges the advantage of a high rate of fire decreased; accurate shooting depended on spotting the shell-splashes of the previous salvo, which limited the optimum rate of fire. On 10 August 1904 the Imperial Russian Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy had one of the longest-range gunnery duels to date—over 14,000 yd (13,000 m) during the Battle of the Yellow Sea. The Russian battleships were equipped with Liuzhol range finders with an effective range of 4,400 yd (4,000 m), and the Japanese ships had Barr & Stroud range finders that reached out to 6,600 yd (6,000 m), but both sides still managed to hit each other with 12-inch (305 mm) fire at 14,000 yd (13,000 m). Naval architects and strategists around the world took notice. ### All-big-gun mixed-calibre ships An evolutionary step was to reduce the quick-firing secondary battery and substitute additional heavy guns, typically 9.2-to-10-inch (234 to 254 mm). Ships designed in this way have been described as 'all-big-gun mixed-calibre' or later 'semi-dreadnoughts'. Semi-dreadnought ships had many heavy secondary guns in wing turrets near the center of the ship, instead of the small guns mounted in barbettes of earlier pre-dreadnought ships. Semi-dreadnought classes included the British King Edward VII and Lord Nelson; Russian Andrei Pervozvanny; Japanese Katori, Satsuma, and Kawachi; American Connecticut and Mississippi; French Danton; Italian Regina Elena; and Austro-Hungarian Radetzky class. The design process for these ships often included discussion of an 'all-big-gun one-calibre' alternative. The June 1902 issue of Proceedings of the US Naval Institute contained comments by the US Navy's leading gunnery expert, P. R. Alger, proposing a main battery of eight 12-inch (305 mm) guns in twin turrets. In May 1902, the Bureau of Construction and Repair submitted a design for the battleship with twelve 10-inch (254 mm) guns in twin turrets, two at the ends and four in the wings. Lt. Cdr. Homer C. Poundstone submitted a paper to President Theodore Roosevelt in December 1902 arguing the case for larger battleships. In an appendix to his paper, Poundstone suggested a greater number of 11-and-9-inch (279 and 229 mm) guns was preferable to a smaller number of 12-and-9-inch (305 and 229 mm). The Naval War College and Bureau of Construction and Repair developed these ideas in studies between 1903 and 1905. War-game studies begun in July 1903 "showed that a battleship armed with twelve 11-or-12-inch (279 or 305 mm) guns hexagonally arranged would be equal to three or more of the conventional type." The Royal Navy was thinking along similar lines. A design had been circulated in 1902–1903 for "a powerful 'all big-gun' armament of two calibres, viz. four 12-inch (305 mm) and twelve 9.2-inch (234 mm) guns." The Admiralty decided to build three more King Edward VIIs (with a mixture of 12-inch, 9.2-inch and 6-inch) in the 1903–1904 naval construction programme instead. The all-big-gun concept was revived for the 1904–1905 programme, the Lord Nelson class. Restrictions on length and beam meant the midships 9.2-inch turrets became single instead of twin, thus giving an armament of four 12-inch, ten 9.2-inch and no 6-inch. The constructor for this design, J. H. Narbeth, submitted an alternative drawing showing an armament of twelve 12-inch guns, but the Admiralty was not prepared to accept this. Part of the rationale for the decision to retain mixed-calibre guns was the need to begin the building of the ships quickly because of the tense situation produced by the Russo-Japanese War. ### Switch to all-big-gun designs The replacement of the 6-or-8-inch (152 or 203 mm) guns with weapons of 9.2-or-10-inch (234 or 254 mm) calibre improved the striking power of a battleship, particularly at longer ranges. Uniform heavy-gun armament offered many other advantages. One advantage was logistical simplicity. When the US was considering whether to have a mixed-calibre main armament for the South Carolina class, for example, William Sims and Poundstone stressed the advantages of homogeneity in terms of ammunition supply and the transfer of crews from the disengaged guns to replace gunners wounded in action. A uniform calibre of gun also helped streamline fire control. The designers of Dreadnought preferred an all-big-gun design because it would mean only one set of calculations about adjustments to the range of the guns. Some historians today hold that a uniform calibre was particularly important because the risk of confusion between shell-splashes of 12-inch and lighter guns made accurate ranging difficult. This viewpoint is controversial, as fire control in 1905 was not advanced enough to use the salvo-firing technique where this confusion might be important, and confusion of shell-splashes does not seem to have been a concern of those working on all-big-gun designs. Nevertheless, the likelihood of engagements at longer ranges was important in deciding that the heaviest possible guns should become standard, hence 12-inch rather than 10-inch. The newer designs of 12-inch gun mounting had a considerably higher rate of fire, removing the advantage previously enjoyed by smaller calibres. In 1895, a 12-inch gun might have fired one round every four minutes; by 1902, two rounds per minute was usual. In October 1903, the Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti published a paper in Jane's Fighting Ships entitled "An Ideal Battleship for the British Navy", which called for a 17,000-ton ship carrying a main armament of twelve 12-inch guns, protected by armour 12 inches thick, and having a speed of 24 knots (28 mph; 44 km/h). Cuniberti's idea—which he had already proposed to his own navy, the Regia Marina—was to make use of the high rate of fire of new 12-inch guns to produce devastating rapid fire from heavy guns to replace the 'hail of fire' from lighter weapons. Something similar lay behind the Japanese move towards heavier guns; at Tsushima, Japanese shells contained a higher than normal proportion of high explosive, and were fused to explode on contact, starting fires rather than piercing armour. The increased rate of fire laid the foundations for future advances in fire control. ### Building the first dreadnoughts In Japan, the two battleships of the 1903–1904 programme were the first in the world to be laid down as all-big-gun ships, with eight 12-inch guns. The armour of their design was considered too thin, demanding a substantial redesign. The financial pressures of the Russo-Japanese War and the short supply of 12-inch guns—which had to be imported from the United Kingdom—meant these ships were completed with a mixture of 12-inch and 10-inch armament. The 1903–1904 design retained traditional triple-expansion steam engines, unlike Dreadnought. The dreadnought breakthrough occurred in the United Kingdom in October 1905. Fisher, now the First Sea Lord, had long been an advocate of new technology in the Royal Navy and had recently been convinced of the idea of an all-big-gun battleship. Fisher is often credited as the creator of the dreadnought and the father of the United Kingdom's great dreadnought battleship fleet, an impression he himself did much to reinforce. It has been suggested Fisher's main focus was on the arguably even more revolutionary battlecruiser and not the battleship. Shortly after taking office, Fisher set up a Committee on Designs to consider future battleships and armoured cruisers. The committee's first task was to consider a new battleship. The specification for the new ship was a 12-inch main battery and anti-torpedo-boat guns but no intermediate calibres, and a speed of 21 kn (24 mph; 39 km/h), which was two or three knots faster than existing battleships. The initial designs intended twelve 12-inch guns, though difficulties in positioning these guns led the chief constructor at one stage to propose a return to four 12-inch guns with sixteen or eighteen of 9.2-inch. After a full evaluation of reports of the action at Tsushima compiled by an official observer, Captain Pakenham, the Committee settled on a main battery of ten 12-inch guns, along with twenty-two 12-pounders as secondary armament. The committee also gave Dreadnought steam turbine propulsion, which was unprecedented in a large warship. The greater power and lighter weight of turbines meant the 21-knot design speed could be achieved in a smaller and less costly ship than if reciprocating engines had been used. Construction took place quickly; the keel was laid on 2 October 1905, the ship was launched on 10 February 1906, and completed on 3 October 1906—an impressive demonstration of British industrial might. The first US dreadnoughts were the two South Carolina-class ships. Detailed plans for these were worked out in July–November 1905, and approved by the Board of Construction on 23 November 1905. Building was slow; specifications for bidders were issued on 21 March 1906, the contracts awarded on 21 July 1906 and the two ships were laid down in December 1906, after the completion of the Dreadnought. ## Design The designers of dreadnoughts sought to provide as much protection, speed, and firepower as possible in a ship of a realistic size and cost. The hallmark of dreadnought battleships was an "all-big-gun" armament, but they also had heavy armour concentrated mainly in a thick belt at the waterline and in one or more armoured decks. Secondary armament, fire control, command equipment, and protection against torpedoes also had to be crammed into the hull. The inevitable consequence of demands for ever greater speed, striking power, and endurance meant that displacement, and hence cost, of dreadnoughts tended to increase. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 imposed a limit of 35,000 tons on the displacement of capital ships. In subsequent years treaty battleships were commissioned to build up to this limit. Japan's decision to leave the Treaty in the 1930s, and the arrival of the Second World War, eventually made this limit irrelevant. ### Armament Dreadnoughts mounted a uniform main battery of heavy-calibre guns; the number, size, and arrangement differed between designs. Dreadnought mounted ten 12-inch guns. 12-inch guns had been standard for most navies in the pre-dreadnought era, and this continued in the first generation of dreadnought battleships. The Imperial German Navy was an exception, continuing to use 11-inch guns in its first class of dreadnoughts, the Nassau class. Dreadnoughts also carried lighter weapons. Many early dreadnoughts carried a secondary armament of very light guns designed to fend off enemy torpedo boats. The calibre and weight of secondary armament tended to increase, as the range of torpedoes and the staying power of the torpedo boats and destroyers expected to carry them also increased. From the end of World War I onwards, battleships had to be equipped with many light guns as anti-aircraft armament. Dreadnoughts frequently carried torpedo tubes themselves. In theory, a line of battleships so equipped could unleash a devastating volley of torpedoes on an enemy line steaming a parallel course. This was also a carry-over from the older tactical doctrine of continuously closing range with the enemy, and the idea that gunfire alone may be sufficient to cripple a battleship, but not sink it outright, so a coup de grace would be made with torpedoes. In practice, torpedoes fired from battleships scored very few hits, and there was a risk that a stored torpedo would cause a dangerous explosion if hit by enemy fire. And in fact, the only documented instance of one battleship successfully torpedoing another came during the action of 27 May 1941, where the British battleship HMS Rodney claimed to have torpedoed the crippled Bismarck at close range. #### Position of main armament The effectiveness of the guns depended in part on the layout of the turrets. Dreadnought, and the British ships which immediately followed it, carried five turrets: one forward, one aft and one amidships on the centreline of the ship, and two in the 'wings' next to the superstructure. This allowed three turrets to fire ahead and four on the broadside. The Nassau and Helgoland classes of German dreadnoughts adopted a 'hexagonal' layout, with one turret each fore and aft and four wing turrets; this meant more guns were mounted in total, but the same number could fire ahead or broadside as with Dreadnought. Dreadnought designs experimented with different layouts. The British Neptune-class battleship staggered the wing turrets, so all ten guns could fire on the broadside, a feature also used by the German Kaiser class. This risked blast damage to parts of the ship over which the guns fired, and put great stress on the ship's frames. If all turrets were on the centreline of the vessel, stresses on the ship's frames were relatively low. This layout meant the entire main battery could fire on the broadside, though fewer could fire end-on. It meant the hull would be longer, which posed some challenges for the designers; a longer ship needed to devote more weight to armour to get equivalent protection, and the magazines which served each turret interfered with the distribution of boilers and engines. For these reasons, HMS Agincourt, which carried a record fourteen 12-inch guns in seven centreline turrets, was not considered a success. A superfiring layout was eventually adopted as standard. This involved raising one or two turrets so they could fire over a turret immediately forward or astern of them. The US Navy adopted this feature with their first dreadnoughts in 1906, but others were slower to do so. As with other layouts there were drawbacks. Initially, there were concerns about the impact of the blast of the raised guns on the lower turret. Raised turrets raised the centre of gravity of the ship, and might reduce the stability of the ship. Nevertheless, this layout made the best of the firepower available from a fixed number of guns, and was eventually adopted generally. The US Navy used superfiring on the South Carolina class, and the layout was adopted in the Royal Navy with the Orion class of 1910. By World War II, superfiring was entirely standard. Initially, all dreadnoughts had two guns to a turret. One solution to the problem of turret layout was to put three or even four guns in each turret. Fewer turrets meant the ship could be shorter, or could devote more space to machinery. On the other hand, it meant that in the event of an enemy shell destroying one turret, a higher proportion of the main armament would be out of action. The risk of the blast waves from each gun barrel interfering with others in the same turret reduced the rate of fire from the guns somewhat. The first nation to adopt the triple turret was Italy, in the Dante Alighieri, soon followed by Russia with the Gangut class, the Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff class, and the US Nevada class. British Royal Navy battleships did not adopt triple turrets until after the First World War, with the Nelson class, and Japanese battleships not until the late-1930s Yamato class. Several later designs used quadruple turrets, including the British King George V class and French Richelieu class. #### Main armament power and calibre Rather than try to fit more guns onto a ship, it was possible to increase the power of each gun. This could be done by increasing either the calibre of the weapon and hence the weight of shell, or by lengthening the barrel to increase muzzle velocity. Either of these offered the chance to increase range and armour penetration. Both methods offered advantages and disadvantages, though in general greater muzzle velocity meant increased barrel wear. As guns fire, their barrels wear out, losing accuracy and eventually requiring replacement. At times, this became problematic; the US Navy seriously considered stopping practice firing of heavy guns in 1910 because of the wear on the barrels. The disadvantages of guns of larger calibre are that guns and turrets must be heavier; and heavier shells, which are fired at lower velocities, require turret designs that allow a larger angle of elevation for the same range. Heavier shells have the advantage of being slowed less by air resistance, retaining more penetrating power at longer ranges. Different navies approached the issue of calibre in different ways. The German navy, for instance, generally used a lighter calibre than the equivalent British ships, e.g. 12-inch calibre when the British standard was 13.5-inch (343 mm). Because German metallurgy was superior, the German 12-inch gun had better shell weight and muzzle velocity than the British 12-inch; and German ships could afford more armour for the same vessel weight because the German 12-inch guns were lighter than the 13.5-inch guns the British required for comparable effect. Over time the calibre of guns tended to increase. In the Royal Navy, the Orion class, launched 1910, had ten 13.5-inch guns, all on the centreline; the Queen Elizabeth class, launched in 1913, had eight 15-inch (381 mm) guns. In all navies, fewer guns of larger calibre came to be used. The smaller number of guns simplified their distribution, and centreline turrets became the norm. A further step change was planned for battleships designed and laid down at the end of World War I. The Japanese Nagato-class battleships in 1917 carried 410-millimetre (16.1 in) guns, which was quickly matched by the US Navy's Colorado class. Both the United Kingdom and Japan were planning battleships with 18-inch (457 mm) armament, in the British case the N3 class. The Washington Naval Treaty concluded on 6 February 1922 and ratified later limited battleship guns to not more than 16-inch (410 mm) calibre, and these heavier guns were not produced. The only battleships to break the limit were the Japanese Yamato class, begun in 1937 (after the treaty expired), which carried 18 in (460 mm) main guns. By the middle of World War II, the United Kingdom was making use of 15 in (380 mm) guns kept as spares for the Queen Elizabeth class to arm the last British battleship, HMS Vanguard. Some World War II-era designs were drawn up proposing another move towards gigantic armament. The German H-43 and H-44 designs proposed 20-inch (508 mm) guns, and there is evidence Hitler wanted calibres as high as 24-inch (609 mm); the Japanese 'Super Yamato''' design also called for 20-inch guns. None of these proposals went further than very preliminary design work. #### Secondary armament The first dreadnoughts tended to have a very light secondary armament intended to protect them from torpedo boats. Dreadnought carried 12-pounder guns; each of her twenty-two 12-pounders could fire at least 15 rounds a minute at any torpedo boat making an attack. The South Carolinas and other early American dreadnoughts were similarly equipped. At this stage, torpedo boats were expected to attack separately from any fleet actions. Therefore, there was no need to armour the secondary gun armament, or to protect the crews from the blast effects of the main guns. In this context, the light guns tended to be mounted in unarmoured positions high on the ship to minimize weight and maximize field of fire. Within a few years, the principal threat was from the destroyer—larger, more heavily armed, and harder to destroy than the torpedo boat. Since the risk from destroyers was very serious, it was considered that one shell from a battleship's secondary armament should sink (rather than merely damage) any attacking destroyer. Destroyers, in contrast to torpedo boats, were expected to attack as part of a general fleet engagement, so it was necessary for the secondary armament to be protected against shell splinters from heavy guns, and the blast of the main armament. This philosophy of secondary armament was adopted by the German navy from the start; Nassau, for instance, carried twelve 5.9 in (150 mm) and sixteen 3.5 in (88 mm) guns, and subsequent German dreadnought classes followed this lead. These heavier guns tended to be mounted in armoured barbettes or casemates on the main deck. The Royal Navy increased its secondary armament from 12-pounder to first 4-inch (100 mm) and then 6-inch (150 mm) guns, which were standard at the start of World War I; the US standardized on 5-inch calibre for the war but planned 6-inch guns for the ships designed just afterwards. The secondary battery served several other roles. It was hoped that a medium-calibre shell might be able to score a hit on an enemy dreadnought's sensitive fire control systems. It was also felt that the secondary armament could play an important role in driving off enemy cruisers from attacking a crippled battleship. The secondary armament of dreadnoughts was, on the whole, unsatisfactory. A hit from a light gun could not be relied on to stop a destroyer. Heavier guns could not be relied on to hit a destroyer, as experience at the Battle of Jutland showed. The casemate mountings of heavier guns proved problematic; being low in the hull, they proved liable to flooding, and on several classes, some were removed and plated over. The only sure way to protect a dreadnought from destroyer or torpedo boat attack was to provide a destroyer squadron as an escort. After World War I the secondary armament tended to be mounted in turrets on the upper deck and around the superstructure. This allowed a wide field of fire and good protection without the negative points of casemates. Increasingly through the 1920s and 1930s, the secondary guns were seen as a major part of the anti-aircraft battery, with high-angle, dual-purpose guns increasingly adopted. ### Armour Much of the displacement of a dreadnought was taken up by the steel plating of the armour. Designers spent much time and effort to provide the best possible protection for their ships against the various weapons with which they would be faced. Only so much weight could be devoted to protection, without compromising speed, firepower or seakeeping. #### Central citadel The bulk of a dreadnought's armour was concentrated around the "armoured citadel". This was a box, with four armoured walls and an armoured roof, around the most important parts of the ship. The sides of the citadel were the "armoured belt" of the ship, which started on the hull just in front of the forward turret and ran to just behind the aft turret. The ends of the citadel were two armoured bulkheads, fore and aft, which stretched between the ends of the armour belt. The "roof" of the citadel was an armoured deck. Within the citadel were the boilers, engines, and the magazines for the main armament. A hit to any of these systems could cripple or destroy the ship. The "floor" of the box was the bottom of the ship's hull, and was unarmoured, although it was, in fact, a "triple bottom". The earliest dreadnoughts were intended to take part in a pitched battle against other battleships at ranges of up to 10,000 yd (9,100 m). In such an encounter, shells would fly on a relatively flat trajectory, and a shell would have to hit at or just about the waterline to damage the vitals of the ship. For this reason, the early dreadnoughts' armour was concentrated in a thick belt around the waterline; this was 11 inches (280 mm) thick in Dreadnought. Behind this belt were arranged the ship's coal bunkers, to further protect the engineering spaces. In an engagement of this sort, there was also a lesser threat of indirect damage to the vital parts of the ship. A shell which struck above the belt armour and exploded could send fragments flying in all directions. These fragments were dangerous but could be stopped by much thinner armour than what would be necessary to stop an unexploded armour-piercing shell. To protect the innards of the ship from fragments of shells which detonated on the superstructure, much thinner steel armour was applied to the decks of the ship. The thickest protection was reserved for the central citadel in all battleships. Some navies extended a thinner armoured belt and armoured deck to cover the ends of the ship, or extended a thinner armoured belt up the outside of the hull. This "tapered" armour was used by the major European navies—the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. This arrangement gave some armour to a larger part of the ship; for the very first dreadnoughts, when high-explosive shellfire was still considered a significant threat, this was useful. It tended to result in the main belt being very short, only protecting a thin strip above the waterline; some navies found that when their dreadnoughts were heavily laden, the armoured belt was entirely submerged. The alternative was an "all or nothing" protection scheme, developed by the US Navy. The armour belt was tall and thick, but no side protection at all was provided to the ends of the ship or the upper decks. The armoured deck was also thickened. The "all-or-nothing" system provided more effective protection against the very-long-range engagements of dreadnought fleets and was adopted outside the US Navy after World War I. The design of the dreadnought changed to meet new challenges. For example, armour schemes were changed to reflect the greater risk of plunging shells from long-range gunfire, and the increasing threat from armour-piercing bombs dropped by aircraft. Later designs carried a greater thickness of steel on the armoured deck; Yamato carried a 16-inch (410 mm) main belt, but a deck 9-inch (230 mm) thick. #### Underwater protection and subdivision The final element of the protection scheme of the first dreadnoughts was the subdivision of the ship below the waterline into several watertight compartments. If the hull were holed—by shellfire, mine, torpedo, or collision—then, in theory, only one area would flood and the ship could survive. To make this precaution even more effective, many dreadnoughts had no doors between different underwater sections, so that even a surprise hole below the waterline need not sink the ship. There were still several instances where flooding spread between underwater compartments. The greatest evolution in dreadnought protection came with the development of the anti-torpedo bulge and torpedo belt, both attempts to protect against underwater damage by mines and torpedoes. The purpose of underwater protection was to absorb the force of a detonating mine or torpedo well away from the final watertight hull. This meant an inner bulkhead along the side of the hull, which was generally lightly armoured to capture splinters, separated from the outer hull by one or more compartments. The compartments in between were either left empty, or filled with coal, water or fuel oil. ### Propulsion Dreadnoughts were propelled by two to four screw propellers. Dreadnought herself, and all British dreadnoughts, had screw shafts driven by steam turbines. The first generation of dreadnoughts built in other nations used the slower triple-expansion steam engine which had been standard in pre-dreadnoughts. Turbines offered more power than reciprocating engines for the same volume of machinery. This, along with a guarantee on the new machinery from the inventor, Charles Parsons, persuaded the Royal Navy to use turbines in Dreadnought. It is often said that turbines had the additional benefits of being cleaner and more reliable than reciprocating engines. By 1905, new designs of reciprocating engine were available which were cleaner and more reliable than previous models. Turbines also had disadvantages. At cruising speeds much slower than maximum speed, turbines were markedly less fuel-efficient than reciprocating engines. This was particularly important for navies which required a long range at cruising speeds—and hence for the US Navy, which was planning in the event of war to cruise across the Pacific and engage the Japanese in the Philippines. The US Navy experimented with turbine engines from 1908 in the North Dakota, but was not fully committed to turbines until the Pennsylvania class in 1916. In the preceding Nevada class, one ship, USS Oklahoma, received reciprocating engines, while USS Nevada received geared turbines. The two New York-class battleships of 1914 both received reciprocating engines, but all four ships of the Florida (1911) and Wyoming (1912) classes received turbines. The disadvantages of the turbine were eventually overcome. The solution which eventually was generally adopted was the geared turbine, where gearing reduced the rotation rate of the propellers and hence increased efficiency. This solution required technical precision in the gears and hence was difficult to implement. One alternative was the turbo-electric drive where the steam turbine generated electrical power which then drove the propellers. This was particularly favoured by the US Navy, which used it for all dreadnoughts from late 1915–1922. The advantages of this method were its low cost, the opportunity for very close underwater compartmentalization, and good astern performance. The disadvantages were that the machinery was heavy and vulnerable to battle damage, particularly the effects of flooding on the electrics. Turbines were never replaced in battleship design. Diesel engines were eventually considered by some powers, as they offered very good endurance and an engineering space taking up less of the length of the ship. They were also heavier, however, took up a greater vertical space, offered less power, and were considered unreliable. #### Fuel The first generation of dreadnoughts used coal to fire the boilers which fed steam to the turbines. Coal had been in use since the very first steam warships. One advantage of coal was that it is quite inert (in lump form) and thus could be used as part of the ship's protection scheme. Coal also had many disadvantages. It was labor-intensive to pack coal into the ship's bunkers and then feed it into the boilers. The boilers became clogged with ash. Airborne coal dust and related vapors were highly explosive, possibly evidenced by the explosion of USS Maine. Burning coal as fuel also produced thick black smoke which gave away the position of a fleet and interfered with visibility, signaling, and fire control. In addition, coal was very bulky and had comparatively low thermal efficiency. Oil-fired propulsion had many advantages for naval architects and officers at sea alike. It reduced smoke, making ships less visible. It could be fed into boilers automatically, rather than needing a complement of stokers to do it by hand. Oil has roughly twice the thermal content of coal. This meant that the boilers themselves could be smaller; and for the same volume of fuel, an oil-fired ship would have much greater range. These benefits meant that, as early as 1901, Fisher was pressing the advantages of oil fuel. There were technical problems with oil-firing, connected with the different distribution of the weight of oil fuel compared to coal, and the problems of pumping viscous oil. The main problem with using oil for the battle fleet was that, with the exception of the United States, every major navy would have to import its oil. As a result, some navies adopted 'dual-firing' boilers which could use coal sprayed with oil; British ships so equipped, which included dreadnoughts, could even use oil alone at up to 60% power. The US had large reserves of oil, and the US Navy was the first to wholeheartedly adopt oil-firing, deciding to do so in 1910 and ordering oil-fired boilers for the Nevada class, in 1911. The United Kingdom was not far behind, deciding in 1912 to use oil on its own in the Queen Elizabeth class; shorter British design and building times meant that Queen Elizabeth was commissioned before either of the Nevada-class vessels. The United Kingdom planned to revert to mixed firing with the subsequent Revenge class, at the cost of some speed—but Fisher, who returned to office in 1914, insisted that all the boilers should be oil-fired. Other major navies retained mixed coal-and-oil firing until the end of World War I. ## Dreadnought building Dreadnoughts developed as a move in an international battleship arms-race which had begun in the 1890s. The British Royal Navy had a big lead in the number of pre-dreadnought battleships, but a lead of only one dreadnought in 1906. This has led to criticism that the British, by launching HMS Dreadnought, threw away a strategic advantage. Most of the United Kingdom's naval rivals had already contemplated or even built warships that featured a uniform battery of heavy guns. Both the Japanese Navy and the US Navy ordered "all-big-gun" ships in 1904–1905, with Satsuma and South Carolina, respectively. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II had advocated a fast warship armed only with heavy guns since the 1890s. By securing a head start in dreadnought construction, the United Kingdom ensured its dominance of the seas continued. The battleship race soon accelerated once more, placing a great burden on the finances of the governments which engaged in it. The first dreadnoughts were not much more expensive than the last pre-dreadnoughts, but the cost per ship continued to grow thereafter. Modern battleships were the crucial element of naval power in spite of their price. Each battleship signalled national power and prestige, in a manner similar to the nuclear weapons of today. Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and Austria-Hungary all began dreadnought programmes, and second-rank powers—including the Ottoman Empire, Greece, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—commissioned British, French, German, and American yards to build dreadnoughts for them. ### Anglo-German arms race The construction of Dreadnought coincided with increasing tension between the United Kingdom and Germany. Germany had begun building a large battlefleet in the 1890s, as part of a deliberate policy to challenge British naval supremacy. With the signing of the Entente Cordiale in April 1904, it became increasingly clear the United Kingdom's principal naval enemy would be Germany, which was building up a large, modern fleet under the "Tirpitz" laws. This rivalry gave rise to the two largest dreadnought fleets of the pre-1914 period. The first German response to Dreadnought was the Nassau class, laid down in 1907, followed by the Helgoland class in 1909. Together with two battlecruisers—a type for which the Germans had less admiration than Fisher, but which could be built under the authorization for armoured cruisers, rather than for capital ships—these classes gave Germany a total of ten modern capital ships built or building in 1909. The British ships were faster and more powerful than their German equivalents, but a 12:10 ratio fell far short of the 2:1 superiority the Royal Navy wanted to maintain. In 1909, the British Parliament authorized an additional four capital ships, holding out hope Germany would be willing to negotiate a treaty limiting battleship numbers. If no such solution could be found, an additional four ships would be laid down in 1910. Even this compromise meant, when taken together with some social reforms, raising taxes enough to prompt a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom in 1909–1910. In 1910, the British eight-ship construction plan went ahead, including four Orion-class super-dreadnoughts, augmented by battlecruisers purchased by Australia and New Zealand. In the same period, Germany laid down only three ships, giving the United Kingdom a superiority of 22 ships to 13. The British resolve, as demonstrated by their construction programme, led the Germans to seek a negotiated end to the arms race. The Admiralty's new target of a 60% lead over Germany was near enough to Tirpitz's goal of cutting the British lead to 50%, but talks foundered on the question on whether to include British colonial battlecruisers in the count, as well as on non-naval matters like the German demands for recognition of ownership of Alsace-Lorraine. The dreadnought race stepped up in 1910 and 1911, with Germany laying down four capital ships each year and the United Kingdom five. Tension came to a head following the German Naval Law of 1912. This proposed a fleet of 33 German battleships and battlecruisers, outnumbering the Royal Navy in home waters. To make matters worse for the United Kingdom, the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Navy was building four dreadnoughts, while Italy had four and was building two more. Against such threats, the Royal Navy could no longer guarantee vital British interests. The United Kingdom was faced with a choice between building more battleships, withdrawing from the Mediterranean, or seeking an alliance with France. Further naval construction was unacceptably expensive at a time when social welfare provision was making calls on the budget. Withdrawing from the Mediterranean would mean a huge loss of influence, weakening British diplomacy in the region and shaking the stability of the British Empire. The only acceptable option, and the one recommended by First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, was to break with the policies of the past and to make an arrangement with France. The French would assume responsibility for checking Italy and Austria-Hungary in the Mediterranean, while the British would protect the north coast of France. In spite of some opposition from British politicians, the Royal Navy organised itself on this basis in 1912. In spite of these important strategic consequences, the 1912 Naval Law had little bearing on the battleship-force ratios. The United Kingdom responded by laying down ten new super-dreadnoughts in its 1912 and 1913 budgets—ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, which introduced a further step-change in armament, speed and protection—while Germany laid down only five, concentrating resources on its army. ### United States The American South Carolina-class battleships were the first all-big-gun ships completed by one of the United Kingdom's rivals. The planning for the type had begun before Dreadnought was launched. There is some speculation that informal contacts with sympathetic Royal Navy officials influenced the US Navy design, but the American ship was very different. The US Congress authorized the Navy to build two battleships, but of only 16,000 tons or lower displacement. As a result, the South Carolina class were built to much tighter limits than Dreadnought. To make the best use of the weight available for armament, all eight 12-inch guns were mounted along the centreline, in superfiring pairs fore and aft. This arrangement gave a broadside equal to Dreadnought, but with fewer guns; this was the most efficient distribution of weapons and proved a precursor of the standard practice of future generations of battleships. The principal economy of displacement compared to Dreadnought was in propulsion; South Carolina retained triple-expansion steam engines, and could manage only 18.5 kn (34.3 km/h) compared to 21 kn (39 km/h) for Dreadnought. For this reason the later Delaware class were described by some as the US Navy's first dreadnoughts; only a few years after their commissioning, the South Carolina class could not operate tactically with the newer dreadnoughts due to their low speed, and were forced to operate with the older pre-dreadnoughts. The two 10-gun, 20,500-ton ships of the Delaware class were the first US battleships to match the speed of British dreadnoughts, but their secondary battery was "wet" (suffering from spray) and their bow was low in the water. An alternative 12-gun 24,000-ton design had many disadvantages as well; the extra two guns and a lower casemate had "hidden costs"—the two wing turrets planned would weaken the upper deck, be almost impossible to adequately protect against underwater attack, and force magazines to be located too close to the sides of the ship. The US Navy continued to expand its battlefleet, laying down two ships in most subsequent years until 1920. The US continued to use reciprocating engines as an alternative to turbines until the Nevada, laid down in 1912. In part, this reflected a cautious approach to battleship-building, and in part a preference for long endurance over high maximum speed owing to the US Navy's need to operate in the Pacific Ocean. ### Japan With their victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the Japanese became concerned about the potential for conflict with the US. The theorist Satō Tetsutarō developed the doctrine that Japan should have a battlefleet at least 70% the size of that of the US. This would enable the Japanese navy to win two decisive battles: the first early in a prospective war against the US Pacific Fleet, and the second against the US Atlantic Fleet which would inevitably be dispatched as reinforcements. Japan's first priorities were to refit the pre-dreadnoughts captured from Russia and to complete Satsuma and Aki. The Satsumas were designed before Dreadnought, but financial shortages resulting from the Russo-Japanese War delayed completion and resulted in their carrying a mixed armament, so they were known as "semi-dreadnoughts". These were followed by a modified Aki-type: Kawachi and Settsu of the Kawachi-class. These two ships were laid down in 1909 and completed in 1912. They were armed with twelve 12-inch guns, but they were of two different models with differing barrel-lengths, meaning that they would have had difficulty controlling their fire at long ranges. ### In other countries Compared to the other major naval powers, France was slow to start building dreadnoughts, instead finishing the planned Danton class of pre-dreadnoughts, laying down five in 1907 and 1908. In September 1910 the first of the Courbet class was laid down, making France the eleventh nation to enter the dreadnought race. In the Navy Estimates of 1911, Paul Bénazet asserted that from 1896 to 1911, France dropped from being the world's second-largest naval power to fourth; he attributed this to problems in maintenance routines and neglect. The closer alliance with the United Kingdom made these reduced forces more than adequate for French needs. The Italian Regia Marina had received proposals for an all-big-gun battleship from Cuniberti well before Dreadnought was launched, but it took until 1909 for Italy to lay down one of its own. The construction of Dante Alighieri was prompted by rumours of Austro-Hungarian dreadnought-building. A further five dreadnoughts of the Conte di Cavour and Andrea Doria classes followed as Italy sought to maintain its lead over Austria-Hungary. These ships remained the core of Italian naval strength until World War II. The subsequent Francesco Caracciolo-class battleship were suspended (and later cancelled) on the outbreak of World War I. In January 1909 Austro-Hungarian admirals circulated a document calling for a fleet of four dreadnoughts. A constitutional crisis in 1909–1910 meant no construction could be approved. In spite of this, shipyards laid down two dreadnoughts on a speculative basis—due especially to the energetic manipulations of Rudolf Montecuccoli, Chief of the Austro-Hungarian Navy—later approved along with an additional two. The resulting ships, all Tegetthoff class, were to be accompanied by a further four ships of the Ersatz Monarch class, but these were cancelled on the Austro-Hungarian entry into World War I. In June 1909 the Imperial Russian Navy began construction of four Gangut dreadnoughts for the Baltic Fleet, and in October 1911, three more Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts for the Black Sea Fleet were laid down. Of seven ships, only one was completed within four years of being laid down, and the Gangut ships were "obsolescent and outclassed" upon commissioning. Taking lessons from Tsushima, and influenced by Cuniberti, they ended up more closely resembling slower versions of Fisher's battlecruisers than Dreadnought, and they proved badly flawed due to their smaller guns and thinner armour when compared with contemporary dreadnoughts. Spain commissioned three ships of the España class, with the first laid down in 1909. The three ships, the smallest dreadnoughts ever constructed, were built in Spain with British assistance; construction on the third ship, Jaime I, took nine years from its laying down date to completion because of non-delivery of critical material, especially armament, from the United Kingdom. Brazil was the third country to begin construction on a dreadnought. It ordered three dreadnoughts from the United Kingdom which would mount a heavier main battery than any other battleship afloat at the time (twelve 12-inch/45 calibre guns). Two were completed for Brazil: Minas Geraes was laid down on by Armstrong (Elswick) on 17 April 1907, and its sister, São Paulo, followed thirteen days later at Vickers (Barrow). Although many naval journals in Europe and the US speculated that Brazil was really acting as a proxy for one of the naval powers and would hand the ships over to them as soon as they were complete, both ships were commissioned into the Brazilian Navy in 1910. The third ship, Rio de Janeiro, was nearly complete when rubber prices collapsed and Brazil could not afford her. She was sold to the Ottoman Empire in 1913. The Netherlands intended by 1912 to replace its fleet of pre-dreadnought armoured ships with a modern fleet composed of dreadnoughts. After a Royal Commission proposed the purchase of nine dreadnoughts in August 1913, there were extensive debates over the need for such ships and—if they were necessary—over the actual number needed. These lasted into August 1914, when a bill authorizing funding for four dreadnoughts was finalized, but the outbreak of World War I halted the ambitious plan. The Ottoman Empire ordered two dreadnoughts from British yards, Reshadiye in 1911 and Fatih Sultan Mehmed in 1914. Reshadiye was completed, and in 1913, the Ottoman Empire also acquired a nearly-completed dreadnought from Brazil, which became Sultan Osman I. At the start of World War I, Britain seized the two completed ships for the Royal Navy. Reshadiye and Sultan Osman I became HMS Erin and Agincourt respectively. (Fatih Sultan Mehmed was scrapped.) This greatly offended the Ottoman Empire. When two German warships, the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the cruiser SMS Breslau, became trapped in Ottoman territory after the start of the war, Germany "gave" them to the Ottomans. (They remained German-crewed and under German orders.) The British seizure and the German gift proved important factors in the Ottoman Empire joining the Central Powers in October 1914. Greece had ordered the dreadnought Salamis from Germany, but work stopped on the outbreak of war. The main armament for the Greek ship had been ordered in the United States, and the guns consequently equipped a class of British monitors. In 1914 Greece purchased two pre-dreadnoughts from the United States Navy, renaming them Kilkis and Lemnos in Royal Hellenic Navy service. The Conservative Party-dominated House of Commons of Canada passed a bill purchasing three British dreadnoughts for \$35 million to use in the Canadian Naval Service, but the measure was defeated in the Liberal Party-dominated Senate of Canada. As a result, the country's navy was unprepared for World War I. ### Super-dreadnoughts Within five years of the commissioning of Dreadnought, a new generation of more powerful "super-dreadnoughts" was being built. The British Orion class jumped an unprecedented 2,000 tons in displacement, introduced the heavier 13.5-inch (343 mm) gun, and placed all the main armament on the centreline (hence with some turrets superfiring over others). In the four years between Dreadnought and Orion, displacement had increased by 25%, and weight of broadside (the weight of ammunition that can be fired on a single bearing in one salvo) had doubled. British super-dreadnoughts were joined by those built by other nations. The US Navy New York class, laid down in 1911, carried 14-inch (356 mm) guns in response to the British move and this calibre became standard. In Japan, two Fusō-class super-dreadnoughts were laid down in 1912, followed by the two Ise-class ships in 1914, with both classes carrying twelve 14-inch (356 mm) guns. In 1917, the Nagato class was ordered, the first super-dreadnoughts to mount 16-inch guns, making them arguably the most powerful warships in the world. All were increasingly built from Japanese rather than from imported components. In France, the Courbets were followed by three super-dreadnoughts of the Bretagne class, carrying 13.4-inch (340 mm) guns; another five Normandies were canceled on the outbreak of World War I. The aforementioned Brazilian dreadnoughts sparked a small-scale arms race in South America, as Argentina and Chile each ordered two super-dreadnoughts from the US and the United Kingdom, respectively. Argentina's Rivadavia and Moreno had a main armament equaling that of their Brazilian counterparts, but were much heavier and carried thicker armour. The British purchased both of Chile's battleships on the outbreak of the First World War. One, Almirante Latorre, was later repurchased by Chile. Later British super-dreadnoughts, principally the Queen Elizabeth class, dispensed with the midships turret, freeing weight and volume for larger, oil-fired boilers. The new 15-inch (381 mm) gun gave greater firepower in spite of the loss of a turret, and there were a thicker armour belt and improved underwater protection. The class had a 25-knot (46 km/h; 29 mph) design speed, and they were considered the first fast battleships. The design weakness of super-dreadnoughts, which distinguished them from post-1918 vessels, was armour disposition. Their design emphasized the vertical armour protection needed in short-range battles, where shells would strike the sides of the ship, and assumed that an outer plate of armour would detonate any incoming shells so that crucial internal structures such as turret bases needed only light protection against splinters. This was in spite of the ability to engage the enemy at 20,000 yd (18,000 m), ranges where the shells would descend at angles of up to thirty degrees ("plunging fire") and so could pierce the deck behind the outer plate and strike the internal structures directly. Post-war designs typically had 5 to 6 inches (130 to 150 mm) of deck armour laid across the top of single, much thicker vertical plates to defend against this. The concept of zone of immunity became a major part of the thinking behind battleship design. Lack of underwater protection was also a weakness of these pre-World War I designs, which originated before the use of torpedoes became widespread. The United States Navy designed its 'Standard-type battleships', beginning with the Nevada class, with long-range engagements and plunging fire in mind; the first of these was laid down in 1912, four years before the Battle of Jutland taught the dangers of long-range fire to European navies. Important features of the standard battleships were "all or nothing" armour and "raft" construction—based on a design philosophy which held that only those parts of the ship worth giving the thickest possible protection were worth armouring at all, and that the resulting armoured "raft" should contain enough reserve buoyancy to keep the entire ship afloat in the event the unarmoured bow and stern were thoroughly punctured and flooded. This design proved its worth in the 1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, when an ill-timed turn by South Dakota silhouetted her to Japanese guns. In spite of receiving 26 hits, her armoured raft remained untouched and she remained both afloat and operational at the end of action. ## In action The First World War saw no decisive engagements between battlefleets to compare with Tsushima. The role of battleships was marginal to the land fighting in France and Russia; it was equally marginal to the German war on commerce (Handelskrieg) and the Allied blockade. By virtue of geography, the Royal Navy could keep the German High Seas Fleet confined to the North Sea with relative ease, but was unable to break the German superiority in the Baltic Sea. Both sides were aware, because of the greater number of British dreadnoughts, that a full fleet engagement would likely result in a British victory. The German strategy was, therefore, to try to provoke an engagement on favourable terms: either inducing a part of the Grand Fleet to enter battle alone, or to fight a pitched battle near the German coast, where friendly minefields, torpedo boats, and submarines could even the odds. The first two years of war saw conflict in the North Sea limited to skirmishes by battlecruisers at the Battle of Heligoland Bight and Battle of Dogger Bank, and raids on the English coast. In May 1916, a further attempt to draw British ships into battle on favourable terms resulted in a clash of the battlefleets on 31 May to 1 June in the indecisive Battle of Jutland. In the other naval theatres, there were no decisive pitched battles. In the Black Sea, Russian and Turkish battleships skirmished, but nothing more. In the Baltic Sea, action was largely limited to convoy raiding and the laying of defensive minefields. The Adriatic was in a sense the mirror of the North Sea: the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought fleet was confined to the Adriatic Sea by the British and French blockade but bombarded the Italians on several occasions, notably at Ancona in 1915. And in the Mediterranean, the most important use of battleships was in support of the amphibious assault at Gallipoli. The course of the war illustrated the vulnerability of battleships to cheaper weapons. In September 1914, the U-boat threat to capital ships was demonstrated by successful attacks on British cruisers, including the sinking of three elderly British armoured cruisers by the German submarine U-9 in less than an hour. Mines continued to prove a threat when a month later the recently commissioned British super-dreadnought HMS Audacious struck one and sank in 1914. By the end of October, British strategy and tactics in the North Sea had changed to reduce the risk of U-boat attack. Jutland was the only major clash of dreadnought battleship fleets in history, and the German plan for the battle relied on U-boat attacks on the British fleet; and the escape of the German fleet from the superior British firepower was effected by the German cruisers and destroyers closing on British battleships, causing them to turn away to avoid the threat of torpedo attack. Further near-misses from submarine attacks on battleships led to growing concern in the Royal Navy about the vulnerability of battleships. For the German part, the High Seas Fleet determined not to engage the British without the assistance of submarines, and since submarines were more needed for commerce raiding, the fleet stayed in port for much of the remainder of the war. Other theatres showed the role of small craft in damaging or destroying dreadnoughts. The two Austrian dreadnoughts lost in November 1918 were casualties of Italian torpedo boats and frogmen. ## Battleship building from 1914 onwards ### World War I The outbreak of World War I largely halted the dreadnought arms race as funds and technical resources were diverted to more pressing priorities. The foundries which produced battleship guns were dedicated instead to the production of land-based artillery, and shipyards were flooded with orders for small ships. The weaker naval powers engaged in the Great War—France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Russia—suspended their battleship programmes entirely. The United Kingdom and Germany continued building battleships and battlecruisers but at a reduced pace. In the United Kingdom, Fisher returned to his old post as First Sea Lord; he had been created 1st Baron Fisher in 1909, taking the motto Fear God and dread nought. This, combined with a government moratorium on battleship building, meant a renewed focus on the battlecruiser. Fisher resigned in 1915 following arguments about the Gallipoli Campaign with the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The final units of the Revenge and Queen Elizabeth classes were completed, though the last two battleships of the Revenge class were re-ordered as battlecruisers of the Renown class. Fisher followed these ships with the even more extreme Courageous class; very fast and heavily armed ships with minimal, 3-inch (76 mm) armour, called 'large light cruisers' to get around a Cabinet ruling against new capital ships. Fisher's mania for speed culminated in his suggestion for HMS Incomparable, a mammoth, lightly armoured battlecruiser. In Germany, two units of the pre-war Bayern class were gradually completed, but the other two laid down were still unfinished by the end of the War. Hindenburg, also laid down before the start of the war, was completed in 1917. The Mackensen class, designed in 1914–1915, were begun but never finished. ### Post-war In spite of the lull in battleship building during the World War, the years 1919–1922 saw the threat of a renewed naval arms race between the United Kingdom, Japan, and the US. The Battle of Jutland exerted a huge influence over the designs produced in this period. The first ships which fit into this picture are the British Admiral class, designed in 1916. Jutland finally persuaded the Admiralty that lightly armoured battlecruisers were too vulnerable, and therefore the final design of the Admirals incorporated much-increased armour, increasing displacement to 42,000 tons. The initiative in creating the new arms race lay with the Japanese and United States navies. The United States Naval Appropriations Act of 1916 authorized the construction of 156 new ships, including ten battleships and six battlecruisers. For the first time, the United States Navy was threatening the British global lead. This programme was started slowly (in part because of a desire to learn lessons from Jutland), and never fulfilled entirely. The new American ships (the Colorado-class battleships, South Dakota-class battleships and Lexington-class battlecruisers), took a qualitative step beyond the British Queen Elizabeth class and Admiral classes by mounting 16-inch guns. At the same time, the Imperial Japanese Navy was finally gaining authorization for its 'eight-eight battlefleet'. The Nagato class, authorized in 1916, carried eight 16-inch guns like their American counterparts. The next year's naval bill authorized two more battleships and two more battlecruisers. The battleships, which became the Tosa class, were to carry ten 16-inch guns. The battlecruisers, the Amagi class, also carried ten 16-inch guns and were designed to be capable of 30 knots, capable of beating both the British Admiral- and the US Navy's Lexington-class battlecruisers. Matters took a further turn for the worse in 1919 when Woodrow Wilson proposed a further expansion of the United States Navy, asking for funds for an additional ten battleships and six battlecruisers in addition to the completion of the 1916 programme (the South Dakota class not yet started). In response, the Diet of Japan finally agreed to the completion of the 'eight-eight fleet', incorporating a further four battleships. These ships, the Kii class would displace 43,000 tons; the next design, the Number 13 class, would have carried 18-inch (457 mm) guns. Many in the Japanese navy were still dissatisfied, calling for an 'eight-eight-eight' fleet with 24 modern battleships and battlecruisers. The British, impoverished by World War I, faced the prospect of slipping behind the US and Japan. No ships had been begun since the Admiral class, and of those only HMS Hood had been completed. A June 1919 Admiralty plan outlined a post-war fleet with 33 battleships and eight battlecruisers, which could be built and sustained for £171 million a year (approximately £ today); only £84 million was available. The Admiralty then demanded, as an absolute minimum, a further eight battleships. These would have been the G3 battlecruisers, with 16-inch guns and high speed, and the N3-class battleships, with 18-inch (457 mm) guns. Its navy severely limited by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany did not participate in this three-way naval building competition. Most of the German dreadnought fleet was scuttled at Scapa Flow by its crews in 1919; the remainder were handed over as war prizes. The major naval powers avoided the cripplingly expensive expansion programmes by negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922. The Treaty laid out a list of ships, including most of the older dreadnoughts and almost all the newer ships under construction, which were to be scrapped or otherwise put out of use. It furthermore declared a 'building holiday' during which no new battleships or battlecruisers were to be laid down, save for the British Nelson'' class. The ships which survived the treaty, including the most modern super-dreadnoughts of all three navies, formed the bulk of international capital ship strength through the interwar period and, with some modernisation, into World War II. The ships built under the terms of the Washington Treaty (and subsequently the London Treaties in 1930 and 1936) to replace outdated vessels were known as treaty battleships. From this point on, the term 'dreadnought' became less widely used. Most pre-dreadnought battleships were scrapped or hulked after World War I, so the term 'dreadnought' became less necessary.

Navenby

Village and civil parish in Lincolnshire, England

Navenby /ˈneɪvənbi/ is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. Lying 8 miles (13 km) south from Lincoln and 9 miles (14 km) north-northwest from Sleaford, Navenby had a population of 2,128 in the 2011 census and in March 2011, it was named as the 'Best Value Village' in England following a national survey. A Bronze Age cemetery and the remains of an Iron Age settlement have been discovered in the village. Historians also believe Navenby was a significant staging point on the Roman Ermine Street, as the Romans are reported to have maintained a small base or garrison in the village. Navenby became a market town after receiving a charter from Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. The charter was later renewed by William Rufus, Edward III and Richard II. When the market fell into disuse in the early 19th century, Navenby returned to being a village. The civil parish of Navenby is rural, covering more than 2,100 acres (850 ha). It straddles Ermine Street, a Roman road built between 45 and 75 AD, which runs between London and York. The Viking Way, a 147-mile (237 km) footpath between the Humber Bridge in North Lincolnshire and Oakham in Rutland, also cuts through the village. The Vikings exerted great influence over Lincolnshire in the 9th and 10th centuries, as can be seen in the many local place names ending in -by, such as Navenby. Names ending with -by meant homestead or village. ## History ### Early history Archaeological investigations around Navenby indicate the area has been occupied since at least the British Bronze Age, about 600 BC. The remains of British Iron Age farms have been found at Chapel Lane, a site now protected as a public open space by the district and parish councils and supported by Navenby Archaeology Group. Significant Roman finds include parts of shops and houses that would have fronted onto Ermine Street, down which Roman armies marched to and from the Legionary Fortress at Lincoln. The city of Lincoln was very important at that time, probably the capital of the late Roman Province of Flavia Caesariensis. Evidence suggests that Navenby was a significant staging point along Ermine Street. The Romans are reported to have maintained a small base or garrison in the village, and a possible Romano-British temple and burial sites have been unearthed in the area. A 2009 archaeological dig uncovering a road, building foundations and Roman graves along with pottery and coins, showed Navenby to be a Roman Service Station. Cremations dated to the middle Saxon period have been discovered near the junction of High Dyke with Chapel Lane. Late Saxon remains have also been found under and around St Peter's Church, suggesting the original Roman village had moved from Ermine Street to Church Lane and North Lane by the late-Saxon period. Navenby's Saxon name is unknown. The present name is derived from the Old Norse Nafni+by, which means "farmstead or village of a man called Nafni". In the Domesday Book of 1086, Navenby appears as Navenbi and Navenebi. The Vikings exerted considerable influence over Lincolnshire in the 9th and 10th centuries, as can be seen in the many local place names ending in -by. The Viking Way, a 147-mile (237 km) footpath that cuts through the village, is a lasting reminder of their presence. ### Middle Ages Navenby, originally an agricultural village, became a market town after receiving a charter from Edward the Confessor in the 11th century. The charter was later renewed by William Rufus, Edward III, and Richard II. The wide main street, down which farmers once drove their sheep to market, is lasting evidence of its market town status. A market square once stood at the centre, marked by a cross in honour of Queen Eleanor. Today, the square has gone and the cross is a ruin. Parish records exist for Navenby from 1681, although bishops' transcripts go back to 1562. The documents show the village hosted several annual fairs each year: a market fair on 17 October at which farm animals were traded; a feast on the Thursday before Easter; and a Hiring Fair held each May Day, at which servants gathered to seek employment. The records also show that part of the parish of Navenby was enclosed in 1772. Such was the significance of Navenby at this time that a workhouse for the parish poor was erected here, although the building was later given over to other uses. A Sick Society was founded in 1811 and a Parish School was built next to St Peter's Church in 1816, paid for by subscription. Following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act Navenby parish became part of the Lincoln Poor Law Union. ### 19th century When the market closed in the early 19th century Navenby lost its status as a market town, and once again became an agricultural village. The Penny Cyclopaedia of 1839, published by The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, described the village in this way: > Navenby is in the hundred of Boothby Graffoe, parts of Kesteven, on the road from Grantham to Lincoln, 124 miles [200 km] from London. > > The church is partly of Early English and partly of Decorated English architecture. The windows of the chancel are very fine specimens of Decorated character, particularly the east window, the mullions and tracery of which are remarkably graceful. > > There were in 1833 two dame schools, with 18 children; two day-schools, with 25 children; and one endowed day and Sunday school, with 109 children in the week and 166 on Sunday. Many buildings were erected in Navenby during the 19th century, including a small Wesleyan Methodist chapel in about 1830, which was completely rebuilt in 1840. A Temperance Hall was built in 1852, later used as a second base by the Wesleyan Reformers. A Volunteer Fire Brigade was founded in 1844, comprising five men and a manual engine. The Provincial Gas Light and Coke Company began supplying gas lighting to the village in 1857, and in 1867 a railway station was built three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) west of the village, on the Lincoln-to-Grantham branch of the Great Northern Railway. By 1871, the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln was the principal landowner and Lord of the Manor of Navenby. A witch bottle was discovered in the foundations of a Navenby farmhouse in 2005, thought to date back to about 1830. Containing pins, human hair and urine, the bottle was believed to protect a household against evil spells. ### Modern history Navenby was an agricultural village at the beginning of the 20th century, but the outbreak of the First World War brought changes for the community. A small airfield, Wellingore Heath, was opened on land bordering Navenby in 1917, to provide a base for the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. The flat landscape, with its cliff-top situation, proved an ideal situation for flight operations. T. E. Lawrence, perhaps better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was stationed at nearby RAF Cranwell just after the war, in 1926, where he wrote a revised version of his Seven Pillars Of Wisdom. He mentioned Navenby in a letter to a friend at the time, saying: > I'm too shy to go looking for dirt. That's why I can't go off stewing into the Lincoln or Navenby brothels with the fellows. They think it's because I'm superior: proud, or peculiar or 'posh', as they say: and it's because I wouldn't know what to do, how to carry myself, where to stop. Fear again: fear everywhere. Wellingore airfield closed after the war ended, but it was re-opened in 1935 and its facilities expanded during the winter of 1939–40. By then known as RAF Wellingore, notable officers stationed there included Wing Commander Guy Gibson. Group Captain Douglas Bader is known to have briefly messed at Wellingore while on R&R leave from the Battle of Britain too, and both Gibson and Bader were regular visitors to Navenby. The base served as a satellite field for RAF Digby until 1944 and as a relief landing ground for RAF Cranwell from April 1944 until its final closure in 1945, after which it was used as a camp for prisoners of war from Germany and Ukraine; the inmates were often made to work on the surrounding farmland. Navenby lost many men during the two World Wars. The village war memorial, a rough hewn stone Celtic Cross mounted on a plinth with a three-stepped base, is in the churchyard of St Peter's. It was manufactured by Messrs G Maile & Son Ltd at a cost of £200, and unveiled in April 1921. On it are inscribed the names of the 22 casualties from the First World War and the 8 from the Second World War. Following an initial decline in the population of Navenby at the turn of the 20th century, the post-war years saw numbers rise steeply. This increase can be directly linked to the 35-plus new houses built from the end of The Great War until the 1950s, as well as to other building projects from the 1970s onwards. Other post-war changes include the move away from a dependence on farming. Although Navenby continues to be surrounded by farms, it is now largely a dormitory village for Lincoln, Grantham and beyond. Figures from the 2001 census show that, out of a population of 1,666, almost 600 commute to work each day. ## Governance The parish of Navenby was originally in the higher division of the ancient Boothby Graffoe wapentake, in the North Kesteven division of the county of Lincolnshire. The term wapentake dates back to the Vikings and was used to describe a collection of local parishes. It originally meant "show your weapon" and the idea behind the term was that all those in favour of a resolution would raise their sword or axe to show agreement. The History of the County of Lincoln, a book written by Thomas Allen in 1834, states: > The Wapentake of Boothby Graffoe is bounded on the north by Lawress wapentake; on the east by Lincoln Liberty and Langoe wapentake; on the south by Loveden wapentake; and on the west by Nottinghamshire. It is separated into High and Low Divisions. Through this wapentake a Roman road passes from Lincoln to Brough, a village just without the bounds of the county. The High division of the wapentake of Boothby Graffoe contains the villages of Boothby, Coleby, Harmston, Navenby, Skinnard, Swinethorpe, Welbourn and Wellingore. Navenby used to be a market town. The living is a rectory, rated at £17 10s. 0d., and is in the patronage of the Master and Fellows of Christ Church College, Cambridge. Navenby was classed as an ancient parish from the 11th to the 19th century, as it came "under the jurisdiction of a clergyman" and existed before 1597. Early records show that the Manor of Navenby was granted to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln in 1292. The money generated by land rent was used by Roger de Newton, the first incumbent of the chantry chapel at Harby, Nottinghamshire, to maintain the building. This followed the death of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I, while on a visit to Lincoln. Eleanor died at de Newton's manor house at Harby in November 1290 and the chapel was erected in her honour. The parish began to take on civil as well as ecclesiastical duties following the 16th-century Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Tudor Poor Law Acts of 1601. The ecclesiastical parish of Navenby was originally placed in the Longoboby Rural Deanery, but was transferred to the Graffoe Rural Deanery in 1968, and it is still part of the Diocese of Lincoln. Navenby officially became a civil parish in the 19th century and became a member of the Lincoln Poor Law Union in 1834. The parish was also part of the Lincoln Rural Sanitary District. The Navenby civil parish boundaries were adjusted in 1931, to include the civil parish of nearby Skinnand. Following the Local Government Act 1888, Navenby was governed by Branston Rural District Council from 1894 to 1931. The village then came under the control of North Kesteven Rural District Council from 1931 to 1974, after the Local Government Act 1972 reformed the districts of Holland, Kesteven and much of Lindsey into the shire county of Lincolnshire. Today Navenby remains part of the North Kesteven district. Before the 1832 Reform Act, Lincolnshire sent twelve members to parliament, including two for the county, two for the city of Lincoln and two for the boroughs of Boston, Grantham, Great Grimsby and Stamford. As a result of the act, Lincolnshire's electoral divisions were amended, and Navenby became part of the South Division Parliamentary District for Lincolnshire. Two Whig candidates, Henry Handley and Gilbert John Heathcote, were returned in the first election. The village remained in the South Division until 1867, when it was transferred to the Mid Division. In 1885 it joined the North Kesteven Division, and in 1918 it became part of the Grantham Division, until 1974. Today, Navenby has its own parish council, dealing with issues such as play-area revamps and the protection of public open spaces. The council is based at High Street, Navenby. As of 2014, the chairman is Steve Woollas. The second tier of local government provided for Navenby is the Conservative-controlled North Kesteven District Council, which is responsible for housing problems and public health. The council is based at Kesteven Street, Sleaford. Navenby is part of the Cliff Villages ward and is represented by two local councillors on the district council: Mrs Marianne Jane Overton and Mrs Laura Louise Conway, who both belong to the Rural Independent Group. Conservative-led Lincolnshire County Council provides the top tier of local government for Navenby, with responsibility for highways, sites of special interest and schools. It is based at the County Offices in Newland, Lincoln. Navenby has one representative on this council, Marianne Overton, who also represents Branston ward. Following the by-election of December 2016, Navenby is represented at government level by Caroline Johnson, the Conservative MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham constituency, following the resignation of Stephen Phillips. Prior to Phillips, the Right Honorable Douglas Hogg QC, stood down from the post before the 2010 election after having to pay back the cost of cleaning his moat. Navenby was part of the East Midlands constituency for the European Parliament until Brexit in 2020. Former Conservative turned Liberal Democrat Bill Newton Dunn represented the area as an Member of the European Parliament. Newton Dunn lives in Navenby and his European responsibilities included vice-chairman of Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy Committee. In the 1980s, Newton Dunn coined the much-used phrase "Democratic deficit". ## Geography ### Topography The civil parish of Navenby straddles the old Roman Ermine Street, known locally as High Dyke. The road runs between the neighbouring villages of Boothby Graffoe and Wellingore and covers more than 2,100 acres (850 ha). The Viking Way, a 147-mile (237 km) footpath between the Humber Bridge in North Lincolnshire and Oakham in Rutland, also passes through the village. Navenby is known as a Lincolnshire Cliff Village, as it is situated on a ridge of Jurassic limestone called the Lincoln Edge or Lincoln Cliff. The small cliff is one of the most distinctive hills in Lincolnshire. Lying 8.7 miles (14 km) south of Lincoln and 8.9 miles (14.3 km) north-northwest of Sleaford, Navenby enjoys warm summers and dry frosty winters. During the Ice Age, most of the region surrounding Navenby was covered by ice sheets and this has influenced the topography and nature of the soils. Much of Lincolnshire is low-lying, in some places below sea level, but Navenby's cliff-top position means it is 226 feet (69 m) above sea level, giving it commanding views over the River Witham valley. The parish of Navenby is elongated in an east–west direction, extending east to the Lincoln Heath and west to the River Brant. The size of the parish has varied over the past two centuries. In 1821 it covered 2,110 acres (854 ha); in 1951 it was 3,345 acres (1,354 ha). ### Housing, streets and nearby places Although house prices have traditionally been lower than the national average in Navenby, they have risen quickly in recent years. In 2004, the average house price rose by 8.2% to £163,186, according to the Land Registry, while in 1999 the average was £60,000. The district surrounding Navenby – North Kesteven – remains a relatively inexpensive place to purchase property. Consequently, owner occupation is 77% – which is higher than both the regional and national averages. However, the rising prices of recent years are resulting in housing becoming increasingly "out of reach for those on average incomes". A 2004 Housing Needs Study, carried out by Fordham Associates for North Kesteven District Council, highlighted the need for 460 "affordable homes" to be built each year for the next five years in Navenby and the surrounding villages. More than a dozen houses, pubs and other buildings have been granted listed status in Navenby. Houses of specific interest include Grade II listed Dial House in North Lane, which has a priest hole, and the Old Rectory in North Lane, which was built of Ashlar stone in 1859 by H A Darbyshire, a London architect. Several of Navenby's street names hint at its past. For example, the street now known as Clint Lane used to be Watery Lane, apparently due to the number of springs that ran along it. The only "watery" part of Clint Lane today is a duck pond. The street includes a mix of 18th-century cottages, Victorian properties, Grade II listed farm buildings and 20th-century homes. Gas Lane, which is next to Clint Lane, used to be called Meg's Lane. It was renamed Gas Lane after the Provincial Gas Light and Coke Company set up a base there in 1857. The firm later became the Navenby and Wellingore Gas Light and Coke Company. Although the business has long since disappeared, the street name survives. The street now known as Church Lane used to be Church Street. The road was named for the village church, St Peter's, which is located here, as is a former village school, now a private house. The school was built by subscription in 1816 and carries the inscription "The Benefit Society 1821". ### Climate According to the Köppen classification, the British Isles experience a maritime climate characterised by relatively cool summers and mild winters. Compared with other parts of the country, Lincolnshire – and Navenby – are slightly warmer and sunnier in the summer and colder and frostier in the winter. Owing to Navenby's inland position, far from the landfall of most Atlantic depressions, it is one of the driest places to live in the UK, receiving, on average, less than 2 ft (610 mm) of rain per year. The mean annual daily duration of bright sunshine is four hours and 12 minutes; the absence of any high ground is probably responsible for the area being one of the sunniest parts of the British Isles. ## Demography The United Kingdom Census 2001 found Navenby had 861 households and a population of 1,666, of which 792 were male and 874 female. This figure shows a population growth of more than 70% in the past 30 years, mainly due to on-going housebuilding projects. The 2001 census revealed there were only three second homes in the village, but that many villagers commuted each day to work. The great majority of properties are owner-occupied, with just over 100 rented from the council or private landlords. Most of the houses (over 500) are classified as detached, the average number of rooms per property is 6.0 and the average household size is 2.3. Ethnic diversity is minimal in Navenby. Statistics for 2001 show that of 707 households questioned, 703 were classed as white. Of those 707 households, 104 were pensioners living alone, 176 were couples without children, 27 were lone parents and 153 couples with dependent children. 343 of the households had at least one vehicle. Sickness rates were surprising high – with 237 households reporting one or more people with limiting long-term illness. A total of 82% call themselves Christians. People aged between 25 and 44 represent the majority of Navenby residents, with 451 recorded in 2001. This is closely followed by people aged 45–64 (442) and children aged 5–15 (221). Children aged under 4 (69) and people aged 16–24 (115) are in the minority. Almost 200 people (190) over the age of 75 were living in Navenby in 2001. The mean age of Navenby's population is 43.5 and the median age is 43.5. In 1851, 136 babies in every 1,000 died in their first year. This figure dropped to 107 per 1,000 in 1911 and three per 1,000 by 2001. The people of Navenby enjoy a high employment rate, although most work outside the village. Almost 600 commute each day, with the average journey to work being 12.5 miles (20.1 km). The 2001 census revealed that of 1,186 people questioned aged 16–74, 722 were economically active, with men working an average of 44.8 hours each week and women an average of 31.2. The service industry was the largest sector of the local economy, employing 67% of all workers, compared to 1841 when 48% worked in agriculture. Manufacturing work was carried out by 178 people in 2001 and 565 were in the service industries. Of these workers, 371 were classed as managerial and professional. In 1841, just 16.6% of male workers had middle class jobs, but the 2001 census showed this figure had increased to 47.9%. Those with few or no qualifications numbered 597 in 2001, while 328 had higher diplomas, degrees or further degrees. In contrast, about 53% of children aged 5–14 went to school in 1851, but today 58% of those aged 16–17 stay on at school. ## Economy and media Navenby was originally an agricultural village, with most people living off the land or trading goods in the local market. Statistics show that, in 1841, 48% of villagers worked in agriculture, but today the majority of villagers, 67%, are employed in the service industry and most commute to work away from Navenby. The village does, however, offer limited work opportunities, with the High Street lined with shops, fast-food stores and public houses. A doctors' surgery, building society and residential care home are based in the village, although the post office closed in January 2011. The local newspaper for Navenby is the Lincolnshire Echo, which includes news and sports reports, as well as job advertisements. The local radio stations for the village are BBC Radio Lincolnshire on 94.9 FM and Lincs FM on 102.2 FM. The newest addition to the local airwaves is Siren FM, a community radio station that broadcasts on 107.3 FM from the University of Lincoln. ## Landmarks The centre of Navenby village is a designated conservation area; many of the stone and brick-built houses date back hundreds of years. More than 20 of the properties, as well as the 1935 red telephone kiosk in High Street, have listed building status. ### Mrs Smith's Cottage Mrs Smith's Cottage is a mid-19th century Grade II listed building made from early Victorian red bricks. The range, the heart of the house, was in daily use for cooking and heating until the mid-1990s. The only access to the bedrooms is by a ladder. Electricity was installed in the 1930s, and the only other visible modern innovations are the coldwater tap – installed to prevent the local council condemning the cottage in the late 1970s – and an inside toilet. The original outside privy and washhouse can still be viewed. The cottage is named after its last resident, Mrs Hilda Smith, who lived there until 1995, when she was 102 years old. When she died, villagers mounted a campaign to ensure the cottage was kept as "something special" for Navenby. Today the cottage is run as a museum, granted permission for use as such in March 2000. It is open for much of the year and staffed by volunteers. The old pig sty and storage shed, deemed beyond repair, were demolished and the bricks used to build a purpose-built visitor centre, used for exhibitions about Navenby and the locality. ### St Peter's Church The Grade I listed Church of England parish church in Navenby is dedicated to Saint Peter. Its parish registers survive from 1681 and Bishop's transcripts from 1562. It is difficult to date the building as it has a mishmash of styles, although its origins are probably 13th century. St Peter's is made up of three parts, including a mid-19th-century west tower, which replaced the original in 1859–60 after it fell down. The perpendicular clerestory is decorated with shields in quatrefoils and is lit with closely set three-light windows. The tall, decorated chancel has very large windows. The side windows have reticulated tracery. The large east window was partly rebuilt 1875–76, and is of six lights with two large mouchettes nodding to each other, as well as a very large reticulation unit. The sedilia and piscina are thought to date back to William de Herleston, who was rector from 1325–29. He was Edward I's chancellor and later became Canon of Llandaff. A founder's tomb, which is in a slightly different style, is probably that of his successor, John de Fenton, rector until 1332. The font is a lavish Victorian affair by Charles Kirk junior, which was shown at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. The Pulpit is Jacobean and the Rood screen by Temple Moore dates from 1910. The Royal Arms are signed "Thomas Hunton of Lincoln. Painter 1710." There is a late 13th-century grave slab, with an inscription in Norman script which says "Pray for Richard de Lue" (Louth). The church also contains an Easter Sepulchre. The carving is recognised as one of the finest in Lincolnshire, if not in the country, and receives a mention in virtually every book written on churches and their architecture. The churchyard is managed as a nature reserve. In 1982, the parochial church council proposed closing the church as it was denied permission to sell its antique silver to assist with urgent repairs. The Archdeacon, Michael Adie, ruled that such sales were against church policy and that funds must be raised locally. ## Transport Navenby village lies at the eastern end of Navenby parish and is best accessed by road, as the A607 trunk road passes through the heart of the village. Navenby can also be reached from the A15 road, which runs past the end of Green Man Lane and links Lincoln with Sleaford. Editors of the website RoadGhosts.com claim this is one of the most haunted roads in Britain. Navenby once had its own railway station, built in 1867 as part of the Lincoln to Grantham branch of the Great Northern Railway. It fell victim, however, to the government's post-war railway closure programme, which was designed to modernise the service and return it to profitability. Some 3,318 miles (5,340 km) of railway were closed between 1948 and 1962 under this scheme, including Navenby station, which was shut in 1962. Today, the closest main line stations are Newark North Gate and Grantham, both on the high-speed London to Scotland East Coast Main Line; nearby branch line stations include Lincoln and Sleaford. Bus services to and from Navenby are limited. The main service is provided by Stagecoach in Lincolnshire, which runs the Number 1 service from Lincoln to Grantham, via Navenby, along the A607 every 30 minutes, from 7 am until 7 pm, every day except Sunday. There is only one bus on a Sunday. The same Number 1 service runs in the opposite direction too, from Grantham to Lincoln via Navenby, every 30 minutes each day except Sunday. Hodson's Coaches of Navenby runs an extra bus each Sunday to Lincoln. ## Education Navenby is served by its own village school, Navenby Church of England Primary School. It is a voluntary controlled school for children aged 4–11. There is a choice of nearby senior schools for older Navenby pupils, although none are within the village. Lincolnshire County Council operates a preference system for parents, which allows them to choose a preferred school, rather than one for which they are in the catchment area. The closest senior school to Navenby, and the one that is within the Designated Transport Area, is Sir William Robertson High School at Welbourn. This is a mixed comprehensive school named after Field Marshal William Robertson, who was born in Welbourn and served in the First World War. Other senior schools within a 10-mile (16 km) radius include Branston Community Academy, and two grammar schools in nearby Sleaford – Carre's Grammar School for boys and Kesteven and Sleaford High School for girls. Private schools are available in Lincoln. Many local senior schools offer sixth form tuition, and further education courses for students aged 16 and over are also provided by Lincoln College, which is the largest educational institution in Lincolnshire. It has 18,500 students, of whom 2,300 are full-time. Nearby Lincoln has two higher education institutions, the older Bishop Grosseteste University and the more recent, larger University of Lincoln. ## Culture and community Navenby used to be served by several public houses, but The Butcher's Arms and The Green Man Inn have long been converted into private houses. Now, just the King's Head and The Lion and Royal remain. The Grade II listed 18th-century King's Head is probably the oldest public house in the village; the nearby Lion and Royal dates from 1824 and is also Grade II listed. It was probably just called "The Lion" when it first opened, but added "Royal" to its name in honour of a special visitor. There is a large emblem over the front door, topped by the Prince of Wales's feathers, presented after the Prince (later Edward VII) stayed there, albeit briefly, in 1870. The former Green Man Inn, at the junction of Green Man Lane and the A15, was once a staging post for travellers and may have also been a court house. The Lincoln Club was established here in about 1741, catering for the "distinguished gentlemen of Lincolnshire". Sir Francis Dashwood, founder of the notorious Hellfire Club, was a member, as were Lord Monson of Burton and Lord Robert Manners of Bloxholm. Lincolnshire has a number of local dishes, including stuffed chine and haslet, and Navenby is home to several local food champions. Navenby baker Pete Welbourne was named as Great Britain's Baker of the Year in 2004, for his Lincolnshire Plum Bread recipe, and Odling Bros butchers' shop has enjoyed repeated success in an annual competition to find the best Lincolnshire pork sausages in the county. Local legend has it that Navenby is part of the Temple Bruer Pentagram. The pentagram includes the nearby villages of Temple Bruer – which has strong connections with the Knights Templar of the 12th century – as well as Wellingore and Harmston. It appears the sign is centred on the sewage works just west of Navenby. The pentagram is seen as having magical associations and is often said to have offered protection to witches. It also, however, has links with Christianity, Freemasonry and the Knights Templar, who used the pentagram symbol to represent "infinity, connectiveness and oneness". Although the A607 trunk road passes through Navenby, the village can also be accessed from the "haunted" A15, which runs past the end of Green Man Lane. According to local legend, a hanging tree once stood at the junction of the two roads, and those who died there still haunt the area. Scottish singer Barbara Dickson, OBE, briefly lived in Navenby in the 1970s. ## Public services Navenby's water is supplied by the Anglian Water company, and there is a sewage treatment works just west of the village. Healthcare is provided by the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust, and a doctors' surgery operates in North Lane. The nearest NHS hospital is Lincoln County Hospital, Greetwell Road, Lincoln, which is 8.7 miles (14 km) north of Navenby. The second closest is Grantham and District Hospital, Manthorpe Rd, Grantham. The nearest dentists are also based in Lincoln or Grantham. The East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust operates ambulances in the Navenby area, and the village is also covered by The Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance, based at nearby Royal Air Force Waddington on the edge of Waddington village. Other emergency services are provided by Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue, whose nearest fire stations are in Lincoln and Grantham, and the Lincolnshire Police Force. The nearest police stations are in Lincoln, Sleaford and Grantham. ## Sport and clubs Navenby has a bowls club, Navenby Bowls Club, with approximately 50 members. The bowls season lasts from May to August and club members take part in three Bowls Leagues; Division 3 of the Cliff Bowls League, Section C of the City Evening League and Division 3 of the Lincoln and District League. At least three evening matches are held each week during the season. Navenby's FA Chartered Standard junior football club, Navenby Juniors, has teams from Under 7 to Under 18's playing in the Grantham, Mid Lincs and Newark leagues, and a Development Squad for boys and girls aged 4 to 5. Nearby Lincoln has a professional football team, Lincoln City F.C., nicknamed "The Imps", which plays at the Sincil Bank stadium. Navenby villager Tracey Duxbury was a member of the Lady Imps team, the women's team attached to Lincoln City, until 2007. She became one of the youngest people to achieve the UEFA B coaching licence in 2006 and now plays with the West Ham United Ladies. More recently, Adam Crookes and Hayden Cann have played for Lincoln City, having represented and grown up in Navenby respectively. Other clubs include Navenby History Group, which aims to uncover the village's extensive historic past. There is also the Women's Institute, which has celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2007, and Artists of Navenby, a 40-strong group of artists. ## See also - List of civil parishes in Lincolnshire

Porlock Stone Circle

Neolithic stone circle in Somerset, England

Porlock Stone Circle is a stone circle located on Exmoor, near the village of Porlock in the south-western English county of Somerset. The Porlock ring is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circles' builders. Although Exmoor witnessed the construction of many monuments during the Bronze Age, only two stone circles survive in this area, the other being Withypool Stone Circle. The Porlock circle is about 24 metres (79 feet) in diameter and contains thirteen green micaceous sandstone rocks; there may originally have been more. Directly to the north-east of the circle is a cairn connected to a linear stone row. No evidence has been found that allows for absolute dating of the monument's construction, although archaeologists have suggested that the cairn dates from the Early Bronze Age, the circle being a Middle Bronze Age addition. A small lead wheel found inside Porlock Stone Circle suggests that the site was visited during the Romano-British period. The site was rediscovered in the 1920s and since then a variety of stones have been added to it; its current appearance is a composite of prehistoric and modern elements. In 1928 the site was surveyed and excavated by the archaeologist Harold St George Gray. A second excavation took place under the leadership of Mark Gillings in 2013. ## Location The circle is located 4.5 kilometres (2+3⁄4 mi) south-west of the village of Porlock, in the south-western English county of Somerset. It is 1.5 kilometres (1 mi) south of the A39 road and is immediately to the west of the lane headed south to Exford. The ring is at an altitude of almost 415 metres (1,362 feet) above sea level, and is positioned 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the Withypool Stone Circle. The land on which the circle is located slopes from the north-east to the south-west. From the circle, a range of different Bronze Age round barrows, or tumuli, are visible at different points in the surrounding landscape. Among the nearest are Alderman's Barrow, Black Barrow, the two Bendels Barrows, the Rowbarrows, and the Kit Barrows. On the east-northeast side of the circle is the Berry Castle earthwork camp, which dates from the Late Iron Age or Romano-British period. ## Context While the transition from the Early Neolithic to the Late Neolithic in the fourth and third millennia BCE saw much economic and technological continuity, there was a considerable change in the style of monuments erected, particularly in what is now southern and eastern England. By 3000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses that had predominated in the Early Neolithic were no longer built and had been replaced by circular monuments of various kinds. These include earthen henges, timber circles, and stone circles. Stone circles are found in most areas of Britain where stone is available, except for the island's south-eastern corner. They are most densely concentrated in south-western England and on the north-eastern horn of Scotland, near Aberdeen. The tradition of their construction may have lasted for 2,400 years, from 3300 to 900 BCE, with the major building phase taking place between 3000 and 1,300 BCE. These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation. This suggests that they were not sites used for rituals that left archaeologically visible evidence, but may have been deliberately left as "silent and empty monuments". The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggested that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead, and wood with the living. Other archaeologists have suggested that the stone might not represent ancestors, but rather other supernatural entities, such as deities. ### Stone circles in Exmoor There are only two known prehistoric stone circles on Exmoor: Porlock and Withypool Stone Circle. The archaeologist Leslie Grinsell suggested that the circular stone monument on Almsworthy Common was "probably" the remains of a stone circle, although more recent assessments regard it as one of the stone settings, a different type of monument more common across Exmoor. Archaeologists have dated these circles to the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age, and have noted that they are comparable to the stone circles found further south, on Dartmoor. In contrast to the two known Exmoor circles, over seventy such monuments have been identified on Dartmoor. This may be because Exmoor, unlike Dartmoor, has no natural granite. Instead, it has Devonian slates and Hangman Grits, both of which easily break up into small slabs, resulting in a general shortage of big stones on Exmoor. This scarcity of large stones may explain why Neolithic and Bronze Age communities used small stones, termed miniliths, in the two Exmoor circles and other monuments within the region. There are nevertheless other constructions in the area, such as the clapper bridge at Tarr Steps and the three-metre Long Stone at Challacombe, which do use locally sourced large megaliths. This suggests that larger stones would have been available had the sites' builders desired and that the use of miniliths was therefore deliberate. Exmoor also has a henge, near Parracombe, although it has been damaged by ploughing. Alongside this, the moor bears a profusion of other Bronze Age monuments, including between 300 and 400 round barrows, standing stones, linear stone rows, and stone settings. The creation of these different monument types might also explain why so few stone circles were created here. Most of the surviving prehistoric stone monuments on Exmoor are located on those areas of moorland outside the limits of medieval and post-medieval agriculture. For this reason it is likely that the surviving sites are not a reliable indicator of their original extent. ## Description Porlock Stone Circle has a diameter of 24 metres (79 feet) and a circumference of approximately 77 metres (253 feet). The stones in the circle are green micaceous sandstone originating from the Devonian period and were probably collected in the local area. Following his excavation of several stone settings, the archaeologist Mark Gillings argued that three forms of stone were deliberately incorporated into the circle: small uprights, low uprights, and larger stones that are positioned in a sloping position. Most of the latter were thin wedges that had been deliberately selected for their shape or flaked to give them a tapering form. Commenting on those cases where the majority of the stone is below ground rather than protruding from it, Gillings suggested that such positioning may reflect a "deliberate inversion of the upright stone ideal". This concept of inversion is also evident at contemporary sites like the Holme timber circle in Norfolk and, according to Gillings, might reflect "a strong chthonic element" to Porlock Stone Circle. Investigation in the 1920s found ten upright stones and eleven prostrate ones, and concluded that there would have probably been about forty-three stones in the circle, each spaced about two metres (6.6 feet) apart. The largest gaps in the circle were on its north-west and east-southeast sides, where the stones may have been removed for use as road metal. In 1950, it was noted that some of the stones had since been disrupted by military training during the Second World War. When the site was surveyed in 1989, thirteen stones remained in the circle, several of which were found to be in different locations from the 1920s. A 2009 survey by the Exmoor National Park Authority found only ten. A fuller archaeological investigation in 2013 revealed eleven upright stones and eight fallen. Gillings noted that as it exists in the twenty-first century, the circle is "clearly an amalgamation of prehistoric and wholly modern standing stones". Directly adjacent to the north-east of the circle is a cairn that has been denuded, many of its stones being removed. There is a linear set of small stones 57 metres (187 feet) to the southeast of the circle's edge. First recorded in 1975, at the time the row contained eight stones, six of them upright, covering a length of 12 metres (39 feet). The stones were mostly very small and barely visible in the turf and were spaced at around 0.88 metres (2.9 feet) intervals. In 2012, a burn of the heather revealed that there were five more stones on the southeastern end of the row, indicating a total distance of 35.23 metres (115.6 feet). The relationship between this stone row and the stone circle is unclear because road construction and quarrying have taken place in the area between the two. The trajectory of the stone row would pass through the cairn adjacent to the circle. Gillings argued that the stone row and cairn were part of a wider monumental landscape incorporating Porlock Stone Circle. He suggested that the cairn was built in the Early Bronze Age, with additions of rough paving around its perimeter made in the Middle Bronze Age. He also put forward the possibility that the stone circle was built during the Middle Bronze Age as part of a wider "re-organisation of the landscape" around the cairn. ### Romano-British use During the 2013 excavation, a four-spoked lead wheel measuring 7 centimetres (2.8 inches) in diameter was found buried in the circle. Although it could not be unequivocally identified, it resembled Late Iron Age and early Roman votive items that are sometimes found in Britain and (more commonly) Gaul. If this identification is correct, it would suggest that Porlock Stone Circle was known about and visited during the Romano-British period. ### Investigation The circle was rediscovered in the early 20th century by E. T. MacDermot, a man who lived in the Lillycombe estate near Porlock. He knew of several stones on Porlock Common but only noticed the wider circle after the heather was burnt away. MacDermot was aware that the archaeologist Harold St George Gray had investigated Exmoor's Withypool Stone Circle in 1905, and informed him of the discovery. In September and October 1928, Gray surveyed the Porlock circle with the permission of the landowner. He also briefly excavated a small area in the centre of the circle, where a dozen slabs of stone were revealed but no charcoal. In August 2009 a resistivity survey of the site was carried out by Gillings and fellow archaeologist Jeremy Taylor, both of the University of Leicester. They did so at the behest of the Exmoor National Park Authority, which commissioned the research as part of their Monument Management Scheme. This survey indicated that there had been sub-rectangular structures situated around the circle at some point in the past, although Gillings and Taylor acknowledged that excavation would be required to determine at what period these existed. Gillings oversaw this excavation in 2013. His team opened a trench measuring 6 by 4 metres (20 by 13 feet) around the circle's northern arc. No artefacts from the period of original construction were revealed, nor were any sealed, undisturbed deposits suitable for environmental sampling and dating. A second trench was opened to examine stones located to the east of the circle, which Gillings's team believed had been part of the stone row. ### Heritage management The site has been designated as scheduled monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. Surveys have shown a marked deterioration in its condition – in 1950 Gray could identify 21 stones as part of the circle, but by 2009 the survey on behalf of Exmoor National Park Authority found only 10. Stones have also been added to the circle in recent years, and heritage managers face the question as to whether they should be removed or accepted as part of the circle's on-going biography.

Yugoslav destroyer Beograd

Yugoslav ship active in WWII

Beograd was the lead ship of her class of destroyers, built for the Royal Yugoslav Navy in France during the late 1930s, and designed to be deployed as part of a division led by the flotilla leader Dubrovnik. She entered service in April 1939, was armed with a main battery of four 120 mm (4.7 in) guns in single mounts, and had a top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph). When Yugoslavia entered World War II due to a German-led Axis invasion in April 1941, she was damaged by a near miss during an air attack, and was then captured by the Italians. After refitting, she saw extensive service with the Royal Italian Navy from August 1941 to September 1943, completing over 100 convoy escort missions in the Mediterranean under the name Sebenico, mainly on routes between Italy and the Aegean and North Africa. Following the Italian armistice in September 1943, she was captured by the German Navy and redesignated TA43. They enhanced her anti-aircraft armament and she served with the 9th Torpedo Boat Flotilla on escort and minelaying duties in the northern Adriatic. TA43 was sunk or scuttled at Trieste on 30 April or 1 May 1945. Raised in June 1946, probably to remove her as a navigation hazard, she was scuttled again in either July 1946 or in 1947. ## Background In the early 1930s, the Royal Yugoslav Navy (Kraljevska mornarica, or KM) pursued the flotilla leader concept, which involved building large destroyers similar to the World War I British Royal Navy V and W-class destroyers. In the interwar French Navy, these ships were intended to operate as half-flotillas of three ships, or with one flotilla leader operating alongside several smaller destroyers. The KM decided to build three such flotilla leaders, ships that could reach high speeds and would have long endurance. The endurance requirement reflected Yugoslav plans to deploy the ships to the central Mediterranean, where they would be able to cooperate with French and British warships. This resulted in the construction of the destroyer Dubrovnik in 1930–1931. Soon after she was ordered, the onset of the Great Depression meant that only one ship of the planned half-flotilla was ever built. Although three large destroyers were not going to be built, the intent that Dubrovnik might operate with several smaller destroyers persisted. In 1934, the KM decided to acquire three smaller destroyers to operate in a division led by Dubrovnik. ## Description and construction The Beograd class was developed from a French design, and the name ship of the class, Beograd, was built by Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire at Nantes, France. The ship had an overall length of 98 m (321 ft 6 in), a beam of 9.45 m (31 ft), and a normal draught of 3.18 m (10 ft 5 in). Her standard displacement was 1,210 tonnes (1,190 long tons), increasing to 1,655 t (1,629 long tons) at full load. The crew consisted of 145 officers and enlisted men. The ship was powered by Curtis steam turbines driving two propellers, using steam generated by three Yarrow water-tube boilers. Her turbines were rated between 40,000–44,000 shaft horsepower (30,000–33,000 kW) and she was designed to reach a top speed of 38–39 knots (70–72 km/h; 44–45 mph), although she was only able to reach a practical top speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph) in service. She carried 120 tonnes (120 long tons) of fuel oil, which gave her a range of 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi). Her main armament consisted of four Škoda 120 mm (4.7 in) L/46 superfiring guns in single mounts, two forward of the superstructure and two aft, protected by gun shields. Her secondary armament consisted of four Škoda 40 mm (1.6 in) anti-aircraft (AA) guns in two twin mounts, located on either side of the aft shelter deck. She was also equipped with two triple mounts of 550 mm (22 in) torpedo tubes and two machine guns. Her fire-control system was provided by the Dutch firm of Hazemayer. As built, she could also carry 30 naval mines. She was laid down in 1936, launched on 23 December 1937, and was commissioned into the KM on 28 April 1939. ## Service history ### Yugoslavia Less than a month after being commissioned, Beograd was sent to the United Kingdom with a large part of Yugoslavia's gold reserve, 7,344 ingots, to be lodged with the Bank of England for safekeeping. At the time Yugoslavia entered World War II as a result of the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Beograd and her sister ships were allocated to the 1st Torpedo Division at the Bay of Kotor. To prevent a bridgehead being established at Zara, an Italian enclave on the Dalmatian coast, Beograd, four 250t-class torpedo boats and six motor torpedo boats were dispatched to the port of Šibenik, 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the south of Zara, in preparation for an attack. The attack was to be coordinated with the 12th Infantry Division Jadranska and two combined regiments of the Royal Yugoslav Army attacking from the Benkovac area, supported by the Royal Yugoslav Air Force's 81st Bomber Group. The Yugoslavs launched their attack on 9 April, but the naval prong of the attack faltered when Beograd's starboard engine was put out of action after a series of near misses from Italian aircraft off Šibenik. The destroyer then limped to the Bay of Kotor for repairs, escorted by the remainder of the force. She was captured there by Italian forces on 17 April. ### Italy In Italian service, Beograd was refitted and repaired. A new director was fitted on her bridge and 20 mm (0.79 in) L/65 Breda Model 35 guns were added to her armament. She was commissioned in the Royal Italian Navy (Italian: Regia Marina) under the name Sebenico in August 1941, and served as a convoy escort on routes between Italy and the Aegean and North Africa, completing more than 100 missions over a two-year period. On 18 October 1941, off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the British submarine HMS Ursula sank a steamer that was under escort by a force that included Sebenico. On 29 March 1942, Sebenico and three torpedo boats were escorting a convoy off Brindisi when the British submarine HMS Proteus sank one of the escorted freighters. She retained her searchlight amidships and her aft director until at least mid-1942. According to the naval historian M. J. Whitley, it is likely that her aft torpedo tubes were removed towards the end of her time in Italian hands in order to make space for additional anti-aircraft armament, but the details of what weapons may have been fitted are not known. ### Germany When the Italians capitulated in September 1943, the German Navy (German: Kriegsmarine) seized Sebenico in the port of Venice on 9 September and renamed her TA43 (German: Torpedoboot Ausland 43). The term Ausland and prefix TA were used to denote that she was a captured vessel put into German service. At the time of her capture she was either damaged or had been made unserviceable by her crew. While in German service her anti-aircraft armament was improved using space provided by removing one of the triple torpedo mounts. She was fitted with seven 37 mm (1.5 in) guns in one double-mount and five single-mounts, as well as two single-mount 20 mm (0.79 in) guns. In February 1945 she was allocated to the 9th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, which consisted entirely of captured destroyers and torpedo boats. She was used for escort work and on minelaying duties in the northern Adriatic. As late as 1 April 1945, TA43 was still in commission and available to fight, although she saw little action. Naval history sources differ on her final fate. According to Roger Chesneau, she was sunk at the port of Trieste by Yugoslav People's Army artillery fire on 30 April 1945, and was raised in June 1946, probably to remove her as a navigation hazard, and she was scuttled a month later. David Brown records that she was scuttled at Trieste on 1 May 1945. Maurizio Brescia states she was scuttled by the Germans at Trieste on 1 May 1945 and was broken up in 1947.

Black Christian Siriano gown of Billy Porter

Tuxedo dress worn by Billy Porter

American actor Billy Porter wore a black velvet tuxedo dress designed by Christian Siriano on the red carpet of the 91st Academy Awards on February 24, 2019. At the time, Porter had recently come into public view for his breakout role in the FX television series Pose and had been receiving attention for his boundary-pushing red carpet attire during the 2018–19 film awards season. Following his appearance at the 76th Golden Globe Awards in a custom silver suit with fuchsia-lined cape, he was invited to host red carpet interviews at the upcoming Oscars pre-show. Porter approached Siriano and together they conceived the tuxedo gown. The gown was well received by fashion journalists, who highlighted its elegant design. It cemented Porter's status as a celebrity and as a fashion icon. Critics have described it as a favorite Oscars dress and one of Porter's most fashionable red carpet looks. Porter considers the outfit a piece of political art intended to drive a conversation about men's fashion and masculinity, for which it has received praise from fashion writers, academics, and the general public, as well as criticism from conservative commentators. ## Background Billy Porter first came to prominence after originating the role of drag queen "Lola" in the Broadway musical Kinky Boots in 2013, for which he won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. In 2018, he was cast as ball culture fashion designer Pray Tell in the critically acclaimed FX drama Pose, which critics have called his breakout role. Porter made several red carpet appearances during the 2018–19 film awards season on the strength of his performance in Pose, wearing outfits – both suits and dresses – by designers including Tom Ford and Michael Kors. Porter was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama for his role in Pose. On January 6, 2019, he walked the red carpet at the 76th Golden Globe Awards in a custom silver suit with fuchsia-lined cape designed by Randi Rahm. Porter, who is gay, said he wanted to wear an outfit that would prompt a conversation about red carpet fashion and its relationship to masculinity for his first major awards show appearance. Following the Golden Globes, Porter's popularity soared; he later said the outfit "changed everything for me." ## Design and development In early February 2019, ABC News asked Porter to host Oscars pre-show interviews on the red carpet at the 91st Academy Awards, scheduled for February 24. Porter wanted to wear a custom gown, and selected designer Christian Siriano based on his reputation for dressing celebrities whose bodies and style do not fit into conventional norms of beauty and fashion. Porter and his stylist Sam Ratelle approached Siriano after his February 9 show at New York Fashion Week. Despite the short notice – custom red carpet gowns typically take months to complete – Siriano accepted immediately. Working from Porter's desire to play with gender norms, Siriano came up with the combined ball gown and tuxedo concept. He also designed a secondary outfit for Porter after discovering that the gown would be impractical for the stage where Porter was set to conduct interviews. The entire design was created over a single week. Siriano, Ratelle, and their teams worked up to 18 hours a day to complete the outfits. The final ensemble comprised a full-length black velvet ball gown with a strapless bodice worn over a high-necked white tuxedo shirt with ruffled cuffs, topped by a black velvet tuxedo jacket with silk lapels and large black bow tie. The ball gown's skirt is reminiscent of gowns from the 1860s, with a flattened front and volume at the back and sides. The exaggerated size of the bow tie references the ornamental use of bows on feminine clothing. Porter wore jewelry by Oscar Heyman and six-inch heeled boots by Rick Owens with the outfit. After his arrival, Porter changed into a tuxedo with black velvet palazzo pants to conduct pre-show interviews. Ratelle said the design had been inspired by the 1878 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children. Users on social media compared Porter's outfit to a similar 1980s look by ball culture icon Hector Xtravaganza. Ratelle confirmed that the resemblance was unintentional, but stated that he and Porter felt it was an honor "to pay our respects to Hector". Fashion historian Lydia Edwards suggested that the use of black connected the dress to historical menswear and contemporary womenswear, and gave the ensemble a dignified yet dramatic impact. Porter described the ensemble as a political statement that challenges norms of masculinity and femininity. Speaking to Vogue in 2019, he said, "This look was interesting because it's not drag. I'm not a drag queen, I'm a man in a dress." He later explained to Variety that he was interested in continuing to push the norms for what was considered acceptable for masculine red carpet fashion. He also called his choice to wear a dress to the Oscars a business decision, saying that as an entertainer, seeking attention via fashion was part of how he earned a living. ## Reception Fashion critics responded positively to the dress upon its debut, highlighting its elegant design and boundary-pushing gender expression. Erica Gonzales of Harper's Bazaar wrote that it "looked worthy of its own Academy Award." Vanity Fair placed Porter on its "best dressed" list for 2019. People called the dress "one of the biggest style moments of the Oscars red carpet". Choire Sicha of The New York Times called his arrival "an exciting start" to the night, and expressed disappointment that few other guests dressed to subvert gender roles in the same way. The Philadelphia Inquirer called Porter "the belle of the gender-bending red carpet season". The New Yorker described it as "a sumptuous collision of butch-femme aesthetics". Several outlets felt that Porter's look had stolen the show. Some critics joked that he had "won" the red carpet completely. Several critics noted that the dress generated a significant response on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Year-end data from the Google search engine showed that Porter's gown was the most-searched-for red carpet outfit of 2019. Porter did attract some criticism for wearing a dress on the red carpet. American conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren called the look an "assault on masculinity". Users on social media accused him of contributing to the emasculation of black men. Porter dismissed these criticisms, saying, "I don't understand why my putting on a dress causes this much strife in your life." In February 2020, the Twitter account of long-running children's show Sesame Street posted photos of Porter wearing the dress while filming an appearance on the show, prompting criticism from conservative commentators. Arkansas Republican state senator Jason Rapert made a series of critical posts on Facebook, culminating in the suggestion that he would pass a bill to cut funding from Arkansas PBS, the local PBS affiliate. Although long associated with Sesame Street, PBS had not actually funded the series since the program's move to HBO in 2015. Porter went ahead with the episode as planned, saying "If you don't like it, don't watch it." ## Legacy Following his appearance at the 91st Academy Awards, Porter became popularly known as a fashion icon; the tuxedo gown was frequently mentioned as his first high-profile fashion moment and one of his most fashionable overall. According to Porter, his public profile took off after the Oscars, which he attributed directly to the impact of the tuxedo gown. Porter expressed surprise at the reaction to the gown, saying "I didn't know it was going to be a thiiinnng." In contrast, Siriano expected the dress to be a hit, saying "I don't think any man has ever worn a gown on the Oscars red carpet before." Fashion critics writing in retrospect have described the tuxedo gown as an iconic Oscars dress. Writing for Allure in 2020, Ashley C. Ford called the look "the picture of poise and regality." CNN Style writer Marianna Cerini remembered Porter's outfit as "the only look everyone wanted to talk about". Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian, in a 2022 column about Oscars fashion, called the tuxedo gown a "tasteful way to challenge fashion orthodoxies." Academics have also considered the legacy of the dress. Queer theorist Kathryn Bond Stockton agreed with Porter's statement that the dress was an expression of power, rhetorically asking if it could "move whole systems". Lydia Edwards agreed that the gown was a "powerful statement of the individual's queer identity", but felt that the ball gown was unlikely to become known as a "genderless" garment given its "unrelenting feminine history". Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén placed the tuxedo dress in counterpoint to a long history of women wearing suits at the Oscars. Lundén also noted that although Porter wore another gown to the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020, the press had by then "incorporated his fashion statement into the usual pool of red-carpet critique", so it was no longer treated as unusual. In October 2021, Porter criticized Vogue for featuring English musician Harry Styles in a blue Gucci dress as their first male solo cover model. He felt selecting a "straight white man" to represent genderfluid fashion was inappropriate, saying that he "had to fight my entire life to get to the place where I could wear a dress to the Oscars and not be gunned down. All he has to do is be white and straight". Porter later apologized for bringing Styles into the conversation and said that his criticism was directed at "the systems of oppression and erasure of people of color who contribute to the culture" rather than Styles personally. A photograph of the gown was featured at Gender Bending Fashion, a 2019 exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, along with other gender non-conforming fashion items such as a tuxedo worn by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (1930). In 2022, the dress was featured in the show Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It was displayed with a wedding dress worn by drag queen Bimini Bon-Boulash on the second series of RuPaul's Drag Race UK and the blue Gucci dress that Styles wore on the cover of Vogue. Porter attended the 80th Golden Globe Awards in 2023 as a presenter, wearing a fuchsia pink velvet tuxedo gown also by Siriano. He presented the Carol Burnett Award to his friend Ryan Murphy, with whom he had worked on Pose. In his acceptance speech, Murphy explained that he had asked Porter to wear the original tuxedo gown again, and Porter replied, "Bitch, it’s in a museum". Siriano created a new tuxedo gown for him to wear instead. ## See also - List of individual dresses - Queer fashion

Forrest Highway

Highway in Western Australia

Forrest Highway is a 95-kilometre-long (59 mi) highway in Western Australia's Peel and South West regions, extending Perth's Kwinana Freeway from east of Mandurah down to Bunbury. Old Coast Road was the original Mandurah–Bunbury route, dating back to the 1840s. Part of that road, and the Australind Bypass around Australind and Eaton, were subsumed by Forrest Highway. The highway begins at Kwinana Freeway's southern terminus in Ravenswood, continues around the Peel Inlet to Lake Clifton, and heads south to finish at Bunbury's Eelup Roundabout. There are a number of at-grade intersections with minor roads in the shires of Murray, Waroona, and Harvey including Greenlands Road and Old Bunbury Road, both of which connect to South Western Highway near Pinjarra. The settlement of Australind by the Western Australian Land Company in 1840–41 prompted the first real need for a good quality road to Perth. A coastal Australind–Mandurah route was completed by 2 November 1842. Though the road was rebuilt by convicts in the 1850s, its importance was already declining. With a new road via Pinjarra at the foothills of the Darling Scarp completed in 1876, and the opening of the Perth−Bunbury railway in 1893, few people travelled up the old coastal road. In the late 1930s there was a proposal to re-establish the road as a tourist route, which could also reduce traffic on the main road along the foothills, but it was put on hold due to World War II. Improvements to Old Coast Road started in the early 1950s, but with little progress made until 1954 when the Main Roads Department approved £1000 worth of works. The name "Old Coast Road" was formally adopted on 27 January 1959, and a sealed road was completed in September 1969. Since the 1980s, the state government has been upgrading the main Perth to Bunbury route, by extending Kwinana Freeway south from Perth, and constructing a dual carriageway on Old Coast Road north of Bunbury, including bypasses around Australind and Dawesville. A bypass was also planned around Mandurah, which underwent detailed environmental reviews and assessments in the 1990s and early 2000s. Construction of the New Perth Bunbury Highway project, which became Forrest Highway and the final Kwinana Freeway extension, began in December 2006, and the new highway was opened on 20 September 2009. In June 2014, Forrest Highway was extended south to Bunbury by renaming much of Old Coast Road as well as Australind Bypass as part of the highway. Within one year of opening, the number of road accidents in the area had decreased significantly, but tourism and businesses in the towns on bypassed routes were also affected. There are few services alongside the highway, though a pair of roadhouses opened in 2017 south of Greenlands Road. The southern portion of the road going past Australind into Bunbury is planned to be bypassed by the Bunbury Outer Ring Road when that opens in 2024. ## Route description Forrest Highway is the southern section of State Route 2, continuing south from Kwinana Freeway at a folded diamond interchange with Pinjarra Road. All other intersections with the highway are at-grade, with cross roads intersected via two closely spaced T junctions. The highway, which is controlled and maintained by Main Roads Western Australia, has two lanes in each direction separated by a wide median strip, and a speed limit of 110 kilometres per hour (70 mph). The road travels south for six kilometres (4 mi), over the Murray River and through rural farmland in and beyond South Yunderup. The highway then veers south-west, meeting Greenlands Road at a pair of staggered T junctions, and continues towards the Harvey Estuary over a distance of nine kilometres (6 mi) before intersecting Mills Road, at another pair of closely spaced T junctions. The road curves back to the south, reaching Old Bunbury Road after ten kilometres (6.2 mi). Forrest Highway meanders across the Spearwood dune system for ten and a half kilometres (6.5 mi), through a series of large curves, before it reaches Old Coast Road at , an alternative coastal route to . Forrest Highway continues south for 25 kilometres (16 mi), to the west of Myalup State Forest and two to three kilometres (1.2 to 1.9 mi) east of Lake Preston. A further 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) takes the highway to the northern edge of Leschenault. In these sections, the highway passes turnoffs to Preston Beach, Myalup and Binningup. The countryside for this part is mostly tuart, jarrah and marri forest, with some wetland vegetation and some cleared farming land. The highway then heads south-east, going inland to bypass the developed areas east of the Leschenault Inlet. After five and a half kilometres (3.4 mi) Forrest Highway crosses the Brunswick River, continues southwards towards the Collie River for another five and a half kilometres (3.4 mi). It crosses the river, then curves around Eaton to head westward to the Eelup Roundabout, which it reaches after travelling for nine kilometres (5.6 mi) and crossing the adjacent Preston River. The signalised roundabout provides access into Bunbury, as well as to Robertson Road, a ring road that connects to South Western Highway and Bussell Highway. When the highway was first opened in 2009, the average daily weekday traffic volume north of Old Bunbury Road was 9,680. By April 2011, it had increased to 10,660 vehicles. In 2012 up to 14,000 vehicles per day used the highway, and 17,000 by 2014. ## History ### Background Following the establishment of the Swan River Colony, the earliest report of exploration of the district around what is now Bunbury is from Lieutenant Bunbury in December 1836. The route he – and later others – took was slow and hazardous, taking four days to cover around 130 kilometres (80 mi), and crossing four rivers. The route began with passage from Perth to Pinjarra, before turning south-west and passing through low, open scrubland, and a medium-timbered area with low marshes. The first river to cross was the Harvey River, which could only be forded by horses at a single point, near the river mouth. Continuing south-westward, the northern tip of Leschenault Estuary was reached, and its shores followed before curving around into Bunbury. The last stretch of approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) was the most dangerous for many years, as it required precarious crossings at the Collie and Preston Rivers. In an initial attempt to settle the area, the government declared the land open for pastoral settlement by ordinary settlers, but little progress was made. By 1840, the population was just fifty-three, and most of those were in or near Bunbury (then known as Port Leschenault). The settlement of Australind by the Western Australian Land Company in 1840–41 prompted the first real need for a good quality road to Perth. Throughout much of 1842, there was much debate and discussion over providing a new route to Bunbury. A coastal route from Fremantle had been proposed, while an alternative proposal published on 11 May was a new route from Pinjarra to Bunbury, via an upstream crossing of the Harvey River, where a bridge could easily be built. The coastal route would have required a ferry to cross the Murray River's estuary, and would not go through Pinjarra, a significant settlement in the area; however, it would be shorter, had more water along the route, and would go through the village of Mandurah, which had a population of twenty-nine people from six families. In a letter dated 12 June 1842 in the Colonial Secretary's Records, Marshall Waller Clifton, Chief Commissioner of the Western Australian Land Company, wrote of the need for an improved Perth–Fremantle–Bunbury road. On a special trip he took in the previous October to look for a new route, two surveyors gave their approval to the proposed coastal route, with a ferry across the estuary. Governor John Hutt approved of the idea of a road, but thought a ferry would be impractical, at least during winter, and that the lack of public funds made it impossible. Clifton continued to write letters to the Colonial Secretary advocating the construction of a road. ### 19th century road During the winter of 1842, the existing route became impassable, and Clifton undertook the creation of the proposed coastal route. He sent his company's men to clear the path and make a road. The first report of the new road was on 19 October, praising the new route but deriding the almost impassable obstacles presented by the large rivers en route. The Australind–Mandurah route was completed by 2 November, and the speed of the new route allowed almost daily communication. It could be travelled in 32 hours, with a ferry to cross the estuary at Mandurah. The ferry was operated, and later owned, by nearby resident Mrs Lyttleton, as the government was not interested at that time in owning or leasing out the ferry. The government later appropriated the ferry on 2 February 1843, and imposed standardised tolls for passengers and livestock. Ten years later, the ferry service was made available to the public free of charge. The road was rebuilt by convicts in the 1850s, but by that decade, the importance of the coast road was diminishing. For most of its length, the road went through well-timbered, sandy limestone country of little value to agriculture, and settlers in the vicinity of the road were scarce. In contrast, settlements had spread and prospered in the foothills of the Darling Scarp, and on 1 July 1853, Colonial Secretary Frederick Barlee announced a new proposal for a Perth–Pinjarra–Bunbury route along the foothills, with a one chain (66 ft; 20 m) width, mostly following the alignment of previous tracks. Between 1864 and 1876, two parties of convicts were involved in the making of the road. From 30 June 1868, the government discontinued the ferry's operation and the position of caretaker, leaving travellers to work the ferry themselves. The news was not well received, with newspaper letters complaining of the great inconvenience to the users of the shorter coastal route. As a result, the government reappointed a caretaker on 30 March 1869. In 1894 the ferry was finally abandoned in favour of a 600-foot-long (180 m) wooden bridge adjacent to old ferry jetties, which was built by contract at a cost of £1700. However, following the completion of the Perth–Bunbury railway in 1893, few people travelled up the coast road. While the adjacent land was still privately owned, it was uninhabited. ### Early 20th century Within the first few years of the twentieth century, the road had become known as "the old coast road", or simply Old Coast Road. In 1907, the road was described as being seldom used, except by tramps, runaway sailors, and swagmen, with very few settlers in the area. For the next three decades, there was little interest in the road, other than maintaining it in a usable condition. By 1918 it had become almost impassable, so the Harvey Road Board decided to spend £300 to reconstruct a 30-chain (2,000 ft; 600 m) length. A few years later, in 1921, the section from Lake Clifton to Mandurah was reopened by Jack Ochiltree, so as to be suitable for motor vehicles, and in 1926 the section from Bunbury to Lake Preston was similarly suitable. The establishment of a tourist route along the coastal road between Australind and Mandurah was proposed in the late 1930s by the Harvey Road Board. The Bunbury Road Board supported the idea, with the beauty and pleasure of the route discussed at a meeting of the road board in January 1939; the lack of a proper road surface was seen as the only obstacle. Traffic was predicted to grow over the next five years to an extent that would justify a second route to Perth, particularly as the traffic volume on the existing inland road was already heavy and causing accidents. The Minister for Works, Harry Millington, considered the proposal in July 1939, and by early 1940 a number of rumours emerged regarding the imminent commencement of works; however, the Main Roads Department had no intention to undertake them. The Harvey Road Board decided to refrain from pursuing the matter until World War II had concluded. By 1943, vegetation was overgrowing the road, making it difficult to spot in places, and in December 1946 about 200 yards (180 m) was inundated by water one-foot (30 cm) deep. Negotiations between Main Roads and the road boards recommenced in 1947, and by October 1948 the provision of a suitable road was costed at £280,000. Given that a good quality road already linked Perth and Bunbury, and there was likely to be little immediate benefit, Main Roads did not consider the proposal to be warranted. At a February 1949 conference of officials from local governments in the South West region it was decided to once more pursue the reopening of the coastal route, due to the amount of traffic on the existing Perth–Bunbury road. Over the next year the proposal was supported by the Bunbury Chamber of Commerce, South West Zone Development Committee, and Bunbury Municipal Council. Reasons for supporting the proposal included "defence, land settlement, relieving the main highway, and tourist advantages". It was also a political issue leading up to the 1950 state election, as well as afterwards. The summer of 1950 had seen a shortage of milk in Perth, leading to the consideration of turning undeveloped land along Old Coast Road into pastures for dairy farming. After inspecting the land on 17 May 1950, the Agriculture Minister advocated for Old Coast Road to be reopened, to develop the adjacent land which was well suited to milk production. ### New construction in the 1950s An official inspection in October 1950 reported that it would not be difficult to improve the old road into a reasonable track, which would then have a better chance of attracting assistance from Main Roads. The Mandurah Road Board spent £1200 on the road, while the Harvey Road Board requested a £500 grant from Main Roads for their portion of the road. Two years later little progress had been made, and Main Roads therefore refused to fund feeder roads to connect to Old Coast Road. By May 1952, works had halted as Main Roads believed that the existing, winding route around the estuary was too prone to flooding. Settlers in the area recalled it never flooding previously, and the Mandurah Road Board was concerned that should a new road be built, they would still have to maintain the old road for access to properties. The road was inspected by the Premier, Deputy-Commissioner of Main Roads J. D. Leach, and the district engineer H. A. Smith. They indicated that a new road would likely closely follow the old road, but that a detailed survey would be needed. Nearby limestone deposits would be suitable for the road's foundation, with the cost estimated at £11 per chain. Mandurah had grown rapidly as a tourist destination in the post war period, and on 17 April 1953 a new bridge connecting Old Coast Road to Mandurah was opened. Construction of the new bridge, adjacent to the old bridge, began in September 1951, and was designed with reinforced concrete piles. The old wooden bridge had rapidly deteriorated due to the presence of marine organisms, and needed considerable attention to maintain it in a usable condition. The opening ceremony was attended by the Chairman of the Mandurah Road Board, W. Anderson, Leader of the Opposition, Ross McLarty, Minister for Works, John Tonkin; Commissioner of Main Roads, Digby Leach; C. H. Henning, MLC; engineer in charges of bridges, Ernest Godfrey; local government representatives, and a number of schoolchildren who were given a half-day off school. No further work had been done on Old Coast Road by 1954, as the road boards in the area had insufficient funds. More pressure for a new road came from the Education Department, which saw the need for a school bus in the area, but could not provide the service due to the poor condition of Old Coast Road. Leach, who was by then the Commissioner, indicated that Main Roads would likely approve requests for grants to improve Old Coast road from the road boards in the area, and that provision for funding had been made in the 1954–55 budget. Work was finally cleared to commence in September 1954 with Main Roads approving the Mandurah Road Board's schedule of works, including £1000 for the following works on Old Coast Road: > "New construction 18 ft [5.5 m] wide southwards from Yeedong-rd, and new construction 12 ft [3.7 m] wide along the eastern boundary of Location 1130 from the end of the existing construction to the northern boundary of Reserve 2851." The name "Old Coast Road" was formally adopted on 27 January 1959, and a sealed road was completed in September 1969. ### Perth Bunbury Highway Since the 1980s, the state government has been committed to constructing and upgrading the Perth Bunbury Highway, a route along coastal roads, including Old Coast Road south of Mandurah. The ultimate design is for a freeway or expressway-standard road, but with staged construction initially providing a dual carriageway. #### Australind Bypass The 20.5-kilometre-long (12.7 mi) Australind Bypass was constructed in the 1980s to relieve pressure on Old Coast Road, and improve local amenity. The bypass travelled to the east and south of Australind and Eaton, to connect to Bunbury's Eelup Roundabout via an alignment previously part of Jubilee Road. There were slight deviations in the route to protect remnant paperbark trees, tuarts, acacia, and aquatic plants, as well as a site of Aboriginal importance, identified by botanical and Aboriginal heritage surveys. Australind Bypass was built in two stages by the Bunbury Division of Main Roads. The first stage opened on 11 December 1987, and was a 4.7-kilometre (2.9 mi) length from Eelup Roundabout to Eaton Drive, plus a 2-kilometre (1.2 mi) link from the bypass (north of the rail line) and the Collie River bridge on Old Coast Road. Stage two, the remaining 15.8 kilometres (9.8 mi) to reconnect with Old Coast Road, was completed ahead of schedule in December 1988. Australind Bypass was opened on 16 December 1988 by Federal Transport Minister Bob Brown, who helped complete the final seal, together with the Mayor of Bunbury Ern Manea. State Transport Minister Bob Pearce planted a roadside tree to commemorate the opening of the bypass, which was also attended by the Commissioner of Main Roads Albert Tognolini, and Mitchell MLA David Smith, Minister for the South West. Vintage cars led a procession from the on-site opening ceremony to a reception held in Bunbury. The new road was designed to be easily made into a dual carriageway when required; this was completed nine years later, with the Australind Bypass duplication project officially opened by Mitchell MLA Dan Sullivan on 18 December 1997. #### Dual carriageway sections In addition to the Australind Bypass, much of Old Coast Road was upgraded to a dual carriageway. A 7.2-kilometre-long (4.5 mi) second carriageway through Halls Head and Falcon was opened in 1989. Two further dual carriageway sections, from Harvey to Myalup, and around Glen Iris, opened on 17 June 1996. The dual carriageway was extended up to Lake Clifton c. December 2000. Construction of the dual carriageway Dawesville Bypass around eastern Dawesville, south of Mandurah, began in late 2000, and was opened in July 2001. ### New Perth Bunbury Highway While Old Coast Road's dual carriageway was advancing north from Bunbury, and Kwinana Freeway was progressively being extended south from Perth, the alignment through Mandurah was constrained by existing development. Keeping the existing alignment would result in a traffic bottleneck through Mandurah. To overcome this problem, Main Roads began planning for a new route east of the Peel Inlet in the 1980s. The proposed Perth Bunbury Highway Peel deviation, part of which later became an extension to Kwinana Freeway, underwent a public environmental review in 1997, and an environmental assessment by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in 2000. The relevant environment factors considered by the EPA were vegetation communities, declared rare and priority flora, wetlands, and traffic noise. Main Roads proposed management plans for each factor. Only clearing of vegetation critical for road construction would be undertaken, and more vegetation would be replaced than the amount impacted, using local native species. A survey for declared rare and priority flora found no rare species, and only one priority species, Lasiopetalum membranaceum, near the southern end of the project. Road construction would impact one conservation class wetland, but no protected wetlands. To minimise impact, road drainage would be designed to contain spills and prevent direct discharges into the surrounding environment. Noise levels would be contained to an acceptable limit in the road design, in accordance with the Main Roads traffic noise policy. The EPA concluded that the road could be designed and managed to an acceptable standard. Main Roads' 2006 plan for environmental management of the project included numerous aspects, which for the northern segment of the project exceeded the environmental approval requirements. Specific plans were developed regarding fauna, topsoil management, construction, foreshores, and both Aboriginal and European heritage. Construction of the highway and freeway extension began in December 2006, with the whole project then called the New Perth Bunbury Highway. The work was undertaken by a partnership of Main Roads, Leighton Contractors, WA Limestone and GHD, known as the Southern Gateway Alliance. The project consisted of a 32-kilometre (20 mi) freeway-standard extension as far as South Yunderup Road in South Yunderup, and a 38-kilometre (24 mi) highway-standard dual carriageway to Old Coast Road at Lake Clifton. Taking traffic around the eastern side of the Peel-Harvey Estuary prior to joining the existing dual carriageway on Old Coast Road reduced the journey time from Perth to Bunbury. The final road names were not known until early 2009, when Transport Minister Simon O'Brien revealed that the section south of Pinjarra Road would be known as Forrest Highway, with the section to the north to become part of Kwinana Freeway. The highway's name commemorates Sir John Forrest, the state's first premier. The Kwinana Freeway extension and Forrest Highway were opened on 20 September 2009, with a ceremony held at the interchange between the freeway, highway, and Pinjarra Road. The roads were officially opened by Premier Colin Barnett, Senator Chris Evans, Transport Minister Simon O'Brien, Member for Canning Don Randall, and the former Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan. The \$705 million project (equivalent to \$ million in ) was jointly funded by the state and federal governments, which contributed \$375 million and \$330 million respectively (equivalent to \$ million and \$ million in ). At the time it opened, it was Western Australia's largest ever road infrastructure project. ### Forrest Highway after opening One year after Forrest Highway opened, the number of road accidents on the main roads in the area had decreased by 60%. Traffic on South Western Highway had reduced by 50% north of Pinjarra, and by 20% to the south, and there was an 82% reduction along Old Coast Road within a month of the new highway opening. However, tourism in towns along the former routes was affected by the reduced traffic flow, with businesses losing as much as 60% of their trade. Forrest Highway has been criticised for the lack of roadside facilities. In January 2014, it was described as "the busiest, most unserviced, long stretch of highway in the nation" by MP Murray Cowper, Member for Murray-Wellington. With public toilets initially only available at the John Tognela Rest Area near the southern end of the highway, travellers have reportedly stopped alongside the highway or side roads to urinate and change nappies. A farming family with property adjacent to the highway was willing to invest in a roadhouse near Herron Point, but Main Roads required roadhouses to be built on both sides of the highway. According to Cowper, traffic volume would need to increase from 17,000 to 30,000 vehicles per day to justify such an investment. A few months later, in April 2014, a Perth developer had begun constructing twin roadhouses five kilometres (3 mi) south of Greenlands Road, approximately halfway between Perth and Bunbury. The property was purchased in 2004, before construction began on the highway, with the intention of developing the site when there was a viable amount of traffic. The main tenant will be a national fuel retailer, with food and beverage retailers and other amenities to be located on both sides of the highway. The facilities were initially expected to be completed by the end of 2014, but work was put on hold due to a legal dispute between the developer and landowner. The dispute was resolved and development resumed in June 2015. The twin roadhouses opened in late 2017. On 5 June 2014, the Geographic Names Committee renamed the roads that connect Forrest Highway to Bunbury – part of Old Coast Road as well as Australind Bypass – as part of the highway. The renaming had been proposed in 2013 due to public confusion over the three names used for the route to Bunbury: Forrest Highway to Lake Clifton, Old Coast Road from there to north of Australind, and then Australind Bypass. Emergency services had difficulty locating incidents due to the confusion. The renaming followed similar changes to Main Roads' internal-use designations in May 2011, which deprecated Perth Bunbury Highway (Highway H2) in favour of Melville Mandurah Highway (Highway H2) for the portion north of Mandurah, Lakeland Lake Clifton Road (Main Road M74) for the Mandurah to Lake Clifton section together with Mandjoogoordap Drive, and an extension of Forrest Highway (Highway H57) for the Lake Clifton to Bunbury portion. Changes to the road signs were The renaming was considered unusual, as it affected a significant length of a major road, which was the address of eleven residential properties. The southern section of Forrest Highway, from Paris Road in Australind to the Eelup Roundabout, is planned to be bypassed by the Bunbury Outer Ring Road (BORR) when that opens in 2024. The BORR will be a 27-kilometre (17 mi) long dual carriageway between Forrest Highway and Bussell Highway south-west of Bunbury, allowing traffic going from Perth to places south of Bunbury to bypass the city. The Paris Road intersection will change into a grade-separated junction between Forrest Highway, the BORR, Paris Road, and Clifton Road. The interchange will split Forrest Highway into two sections, with the northern section of the highway continuing south as the BORR with traffic wanting to continue along the southern part of the highway into Bunbury having to take an exit ramp. This aspect of the design was contentious, as the City of Bunbury wanted for Forrest Highway to be continuous so that more traffic would head into the centre of Bunbury. Only the northbound entrance and southbound exit ramps will be built, with the southbound exit ramp being a loop ramp so that traffic heading towards Bunbury does not have to give way to traffic on Clifton Road. ## Major intersections ## Old Coast Road While much of Old Coast Road was renamed Forrest Highway in 2014, bypassed sections of the former Perth Bunbury Highway near Mandurah and Australind have retained the name Old Coast Road, and have significance as part of numbered road routes. ### Mandurah – Lake Clifton Old Coast Road starts at the intersection of Mandurah Terrace and Pinjarra Road in Mandurah. It crosses the Mandurah estuary into Halls Head via the 184-metre-long (604 ft) Mandurah Bridge. The road heads south-west as a two-lane road serving the canal estate in eastern Halls Head. After 1.7 kilometres (1.1 mi) Old Coast Road intersects Mandurah Road at a T junction. Mandurah Road and Old Coast Road south-westbound form a continuous dual carriageway, and from here Old Coast Road is part of National Route 1. The road then proceeds through Mandurah's southern suburbs of Falcon and Wannanup for 8.7 kilometres (5.4 mi) before bridging the Dawesville Channel. After 1.3 kilometres (0.81 mi), Old Coast Road turns south to run through eastern Dawesville as a single carriageway; about 500 metres (0.31 mi) to the west the dual carriageway also travels south as Dawesville Bypass. The two routes meet again after three and a half kilometres (2.2 mi). Old Coast Road is briefly a dual carriageway for 700 metres (0.43 mi) before reducing to a 28-kilometre-long (17 mi) two-lane road through Bouvard, Herron and Lake Clifton. The road terminates at a T junction with Forrest Highway. ### Leschenault – Pelican Point While Forrest Highway bypasses Australind, there is a turn off for Old Coast Road and Tourist Drive 260 at Leschenault. The road heads south through the residential suburb for three and a half kilometres (2.2 mi) before going through a 1.4-kilometre-long (0.87 mi) reverse curve. Now at the eastern edge of the Leschenault Inlet, Old Coast Road enters Australind and travels along the shoreline for nine and a half kilometres (5.9 mi). The road crosses the Collie River, and 600 metres (0.37 mi) later there is a roundabout with Estuary Drive and Hamilton Road. The tourist drive follows Estuary Drive to Bunbury, while Old Coast Road continues south for 1.4 kilometres (0.87 mi) to rejoin Forrest Highway at the south-eastern edge of Pelican Point.

Battle of Öland

Naval battle between an allied Danish-Dutch fleet and the Swedish navy in the Baltic Sea

The Battle of Öland was a naval battle between an allied Danish-Dutch fleet and the Swedish navy in the Baltic Sea, off the east coast of Öland on 1 June 1676. The battle was a part of the Scanian War (1675–79) fought for supremacy over the southern Baltic. Sweden was in urgent need of reinforcements for its north German possessions; Denmark sought to ferry an army to Scania in southern Sweden to open a front on Swedish soil. Just as the battle began, the Swedish flagship Kronan sank, taking with it almost the entire crew, including the Admiral of the Realm and commander of the Swedish navy, Lorentz Creutz. The allied force under the leadership of the Dutch admiral Cornelis Tromp took full advantage of the ensuing disorder on the Swedish side. The acting commander after Creutz's sudden demise, Admiral Claes Uggla, was surrounded and his flagship Svärdet battered in a drawn-out artillery duel, then set ablaze by a fire ship. Uggla drowned while escaping the burning ship, and with the loss of a second supreme commander, the rest of the Swedish fleet fled in disorder. The battle resulted in Danish naval supremacy, which was upheld throughout the war. The Danish King Christian V was able to ship troops over to the Swedish side of the Sound, and on 29 June a force of 14,500 men landed at Råå, just south of Helsingborg in southernmost Sweden. Scania became the main battleground of the war, culminating with the bloody battles of Lund, Halmstad and Landskrona. Danish and Dutch naval forces were left free to raze Öland and the Swedish east coast all the way up to Stockholm. The Swedish failure at Öland also prompted King Charles XI to order a commission to investigate the fiasco, but in the end no one was found responsible. ## Background In the 1660s, Sweden reached its height as a European great power. It had recently defeated Denmark, one of its main competitors for hegemony in the Baltic, in the Torstenson War (1643–45) and the Dano-Swedish War (1657–58). At the Treaties of Brömsebro (1645) and Roskilde (1658), Denmark was forced to cede the islands of Gotland and Ösel, all of its eastern territories on the Scandinavian Peninsula, and parts of Norway. In a third war, from 1658 to 1660, King Charles X of Sweden attempted to finish off Denmark for good. The move was in part due to bold royal ambition, but also a result of Sweden's being a highly militarized society geared for almost constant warfare, a fiscal-military state. Disbanding the Swedish forces meant settling outstanding pay, so there was an underlying incentive to keep hostilities alive and let soldiers live off enemy lands and plunder. In the end, the renewed attack failed with interventions by the leading naval powers of England and the Dutch Republic. Charles' plans to subdue Denmark were thwarted and Trøndelag and Bornholm were returned to Denmark in the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1660 while Sweden was allowed to keep the rest of its recent conquests. Charles X died in February 1660 and was succeeded by a regency council—led by the queen mother Hedvig Eleonora—that ruled in the name of Charles XI who was only four at the time of his father's death. Sweden had come close to almost complete control over trade in the Baltic, but the war revealed the need to work against the formation of anti-Swedish alliances that included Denmark, especially with France, the most powerful state in Europe at the time. There were some successes in foreign policy with the anti-French 1668 Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic. While the Swedish policy was to avoid war and to consolidate its gains, Danish policy after 1660 was to seek an opportunity to regain its losses. Under the Oldenburg King Frederick III, the foreign policy was aimed at isolating Sweden while setting itself up in a favorable position in future wars. Denmark attempted to position itself in the alliances among the 17th century Europe great powers. Bourbon France and the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire competed for continental domination while the Dutch Republic and England fought several wars over naval hegemony. At the same time, Denmark sought to rid itself of the generous toll treaties it was forced to grant Dutch merchants after the Republic's assistance in the wars against Sweden. Attempts were made to ally with both England and France, but without success. In the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–66) Denmark had to side with the Dutch at the Battle of Vågen, souring its relations with England. In 1670 France allied with England against the Republic. Sweden's relations with France had improved greatly and in 1672 it joined the Anglo-French coalition, pushing Denmark into the Dutch camp. In 1672, French King Louis XIV launched an attack on the Dutch Republic, igniting the Franco-Dutch War. The attack was opposed by the Holy Roman Empire led by Leopold I. In 1674, Sweden was pressured into joining the war by attacking the Republic's northern German allies. France promised to pay Sweden desperately needed war subsidies only on the condition that it moved in force on Brandenburg. A Swedish army of around 22,000 men under Carl Gustaf Wrangel advanced into Brandenburg in December 1674 and suffered a minor tactical defeat at the Battle of Fehrbellin in June 1675. Though not militarily significant, the defeat tarnished the reputation of near-invincibility that Sweden had enjoyed since the Thirty Years' War and emboldened its enemies. By September 1675, Denmark, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire and Spain were all joined in war against Sweden and its ally France. ### Scanian War With the declaration of war against Sweden on 2 September 1675, Denmark saw a chance to regain its recently lost eastern provinces. The southern Baltic became an important strategic theatre for both Denmark and Sweden. Denmark needed the sea lanes to invade Scania, and Sweden needed to reinforce Swedish Pomerania on the Baltic coast; both stood to gain by taking control of the Baltic trade routes. As war broke out between Denmark and Sweden a strong naval presence also became essential for Sweden to secure its interests at home and overseas. In October 1675 the Swedish fleet under Gustaf Otto Stenbock put to sea, but sailed no further than Stora Karlsö off Gotland before it had to turn back to Stockholm after less than two weeks, beset by cold and stormy weather, disease, and the loss of vital equipment. Stenbock, held personally responsible for the failure by King Charles XI, was forced to pay for the campaign out of his own pocket. During the winter of 1675–76 the Swedish fleet was placed under the command of Lorentz Creutz, who attempted to put to sea in January to February 1676, but was iced in by exceptionally cold weather. ## State of the fleets The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54) saw the development of the line of battle, a tactic where ships formed a continuous line to fire broadsides at an enemy. Previously, decisive action in naval engagements had been achieved through boarding and melee, but after the middle of the 17th century tactical doctrine focused more on disabling or sinking an opponent through superior firepower from a distance. This entailed major changes in military doctrines, shipbuilding, and professionalism in European navies from the 1650s onwards. The line of battle favored very large ships that could hold the line in the face of heavy fire, later known as ships of the line. The new tactics also depended on the ability of strong, centralized governments to maintain large, permanent fleets led by a professional officer corps. The increased power of the state at the expense of individual landowners led to the expansion of armies and navies, and in the late 1660s Sweden embarked on an expansive shipbuilding program. In 1675, the Swedish fleet was numerically superior to its Danish counterpart (18 ships of the line against 16 and 21 frigates against 11), but it was older and of poorer quality than the Danish fleet, which had replaced a larger proportion of its vessels. The Swedes had problems with routine maintenance, and both rigging and sails were generally in poor condition. Swedish crews lacked the professionalism of Danish and Norwegian sailors, who commonly had valuable experience from service in the Dutch merchant navy, and the Swedish navy also lacked a core of professional officers. The Danish had seasoned veterans like Cort Adeler and Niels Juel. The Danish fleet was also reinforced with Dutch units under the command Philip van Almonde and Cornelis Tromp, the latter an experienced officer who had served under Michiel de Ruyter, famous for his skilled command during the Anglo-Dutch Wars. ## Prelude A Danish fleet of 20 ships under Admiral Niels Juel put to sea in March 1676, and on 29 April his forces landed on Gotland, which surrendered. The Swedish fleet was ordered out on 4 May with 23 warships of over 50 guns, 21 of less than 50 and 16 minor supporting vessels manned by about 12,000 men, but encountered adverse winds and was delayed until 19 May. Juel had by then left Visby, the main port on Gotland, to join up with a smaller Danish-Dutch force at Bornholm, between the southern tip of Sweden and the northern coast of Germany. Together they intended to cruise between Scania and the island of Rügen to stop Swedish troops from landing on the island and reinforcing Swedish Pomerania. On 25–26 May the two fleets fought the indecisive battle at Bornholm. The Swedish force was superior in numbers but was unable to inflict any serious losses, and two of the fleet's fireships were captured, one by the allies and the other by a Brandenburg squadron headed for Copenhagen. Several Swedish accounts say that Creutz argued with his officers after Bornholm. Major Taube of the Mars testified that after the battle, the officers had been "scolded like boys" and that Creutz, "without regard for guilt or innocence, accused them almost all alike". The army captain Rosenberg told a later inquiry that Creutz "almost had a paroxysm in the night" over the conduct of Johan Bär (one of his flag officers) at Bornholm, and that he swore "never to go to serve at sea with such rascals". Maritime archaeologist Lars Einarsson has concluded that the relationship between Creutz and his subordinates had hit rock bottom before the battle. After the unsuccessful action the Swedish fleet anchored off Trelleborg, where King Charles was waiting with new orders to recapture Gotland. The fleet was to refuse combat with the allies at least until they reached the northern tip of Öland, where they could fight in friendly waters. After the Swedish fleet left Trelleborg on 30 May, the allied fleet soon came in contact with it and began pursuing the Swedes. By this time the allies had been reinforced by a small squadron and now totaled 42 vessels, with 25 large or medium ships of the line. The reinforcements also brought with them a new commander, Admiral General Cornelis Tromp, one of the ablest naval tacticians of his time. Tromp, who also was a Lieutenant-Admiral in the Dutch navy, was made Admiral-General of the Danish navy on 8 May 1676. The two fleets sailed north and on 1 June passed the southern tip of Öland in a strong gale. The rough winds were hard on the Swedish ships. Many lost masts and spars. The Swedes, forming a barely cohesive battle line, tried to sail ahead of Tromp's ships, hoping to get between them and the shore, thus putting themselves on the allied fleet's windward side and gaining the tactical advantage of holding the weather gage. The Dutch ships of the allied fleet managed to sail closer to the wind and faster than the rest of the force, and slipped between the Swedes and the coast, snatching the weather gage. Later that morning the two fleets closed on each other, and were soon within firing range. ## Battle Around noon, as a result of poor coordination and signaling, the Swedish line unexpectedly turned toward the allied fleet. When the flagship Kronan came about in the maneuver it suddenly heeled over and began to take in water. According to master gunner Anders Gyllenspak, the sails were not reefed and the ship leaned over so hard that water flooded in through the lower gunports. As the ship was leaning over, a gust of wind pushed the ship on her side, bringing her masts and sails down in line with the surface of the sea. Shortly afterwards, the gunpowder store exploded and ripped the forward section of the starboard side apart. Kronan quickly lost buoyancy and sank, taking most of her 850-man crew with her. The sudden loss of the flagship and the fleet admiral threw the already scattered Swedish line into confusion and sapped morale. Four ships from Creutz's and Uggla's squadrons immediately fled when they saw that the flagship was lost. Claes Uggla was next in command after Creutz and became the acting commander of the Swedish fleet. When the line came about, Uggla and his ship Svärdet came on a collision course with the still floating wreckage of Kronan, and were forced to jibe (turn the stern into the wind direction) to avoid it. Svärdet's second turn was interpreted by many ships as a signal to turn again; others interpreted it as the beginning of a general retreat, leading to major disorder. Uggla reduced speed in an attempt to gather his forces, but instead was separated from his squadron. Tromp on Christianus Quintus, Vice Admiral Jens Rodsten on Tre Løver and Niels Juel on Churprindsen took advantage of the chaos. They quickly surrounded Svärdet and three supporting ships (Hieronymus, Neptunus and Järnvågen, an armed merchantman) and began to hammer them into submission. Several other Swedish vessels attempted to assist Uggla, but they were in a lee position and could not provide effective support. After about an hour-and-a-half to two hours of hard fighting Svärdet's mainmast went overboard and Uggla had to surrender to Tromp. Despite this, Svärdet was ignited by accident or misunderstanding by the Dutch fireship 't Hoen. The second largest Swedish ship after Kronan sank in the blaze and took with it 600 out of a crew of 650, including Admiral Uggla himself. Only Hieronymus escaped the assault by the allied admirals, though badly damaged, and the others were captured by Juel on Churprindsen together with one of his lieutenants on Anna Sophia. By six o'clock in the evening the Swedes had lost two flagships along with two fleet admirals, including the supreme commander of the navy. The entire force now began a disorderly retreat: the smaller ships Enhorn, Ekorren, Gripen and Sjöhästen were outsailed and captured and the rest of the ships sought shelter in friendly harbors. Most set course for Dalarö, north of Stockholm; others tried for Kalmar Strait, between Öland and the Swedish mainland. The allied fleet tried to capitalize further on its victory by giving chase, but the dash up the coast had scattered its forces and there was disagreement among the Danish commanders on how far they should pursue the Swedish ships. ## Aftermath The Swedish fleet had suffered a major blow by losing its two largest ships, its commander-in-chief and one of its most experienced admirals. Even after the battle, the misfortunes continued. Äpplet came off its moorings at Dalarö, went aground and sank. Around fifty survivors were picked up by pursuing Danish ships and taken as prisoners to Copenhagen. The battle gave Denmark undisputed naval supremacy and the Swedish fleet did not dare to venture out for the rest of the year. The army that had been amassed in Denmark could now be shipped to Scania to take the war to Swedish soil and on 29 June 1676, 14,500 troops were landed at Råå south of Helsingborg. The Battle of Öland was the first major Swedish defeat at sea to Denmark and was followed by further Swedish defeats at Møn and Køge Bay in 1677. The latter was a resounding success for Admiral Niels Juel and has become the most celebrated victory in Danish naval history. The Battle of Öland was the first of several major Swedish defeats at sea that ended in complete Danish dominance over the southern Baltic for the duration of the Scanian War. That the main naval base in Stockholm was locked in ice during the winter of 1675–76 showed the necessity of an ice-free harbor that was closer to Danish home waters. In 1679, King Charles personally chose the site for a new base at what would later become Karlskrona. The lessons from the war also led to improvements in Swedish naval organization under the guidance of Hans Wachtmeister (1641–1714) which included better funding and maintenance, increased readiness for mobilization in the southern Baltic and permanent recruitment of skilled personnel through the allotment system. ### Swedish commission Within a week, the news of the failure at Bornholm and the major defeat at Öland reached King Charles, who immediately ordered that a commission be set up to investigate what had happened. Charles wanted to see if Bär and other officers were guilty of cowardice or incompetence. On 13 June, the King wrote "some of our sea officers have shown such cowardly and careless behavior" that they have "placed the safety, welfare and defense of the kingdom at great peril", and that "such a serious crime should be severely punished". The commission began its work on 7 June 1676. At the hearings, strong criticism surfaced and was directed against individual officers as well as Swedish conduct in general. Anders Homman, one of the officers on Svärdet, was among those who chastised his colleagues the hardest. In his testimony he said that Admiral Uggla had exclaimed "look how those dog cunts run" when he was surrounded, fighting the allied flagships. Homman himself described the actions of his colleagues as those of "chickens running about the yard, each in his own direction", and added that he "had been in seven battles, but had never seen our people fight so poorly". The commission did not find anyone guilty of negligence or misconduct, but Lieutenant Admiral Bär, commander of Nyckeln, and Lieutenant Admiral Christer Boije, who had run aground on Äpplet, were never again given a command in the navy. Lieutenant Admiral Hans Clerck, commander of Solen, went through the process unscathed, and was promoted to full Admiral by the King before the commission even presented its verdict. Creutz has quite consistently been blamed for the loss of his ship by historians, and has been described as an incompetent sea officer and sailor who more or less single-handedly brought about the sinking through lack of naval experience. Military historians Lars Ericson Wolke and Olof Sjöblom have attempted to nuance the picture by pointing out that Creutz's task was akin to that of an administrator rather than a military commander. The practical issues of ship maneuvering should have been the responsibility of his subordinates, who had experience in naval matters. ### Disputes among the allied officers Despite the victories, several allied officers were displeased with the conduct of their forces. Naval historian Jørgen Barfod explains that the battle was fought "in a disorganized manner from beginning to end" since Tromp had given the order for each commander to attack the enemy ship closest to him. Most of the Danish fleet was unable to keep pace with the faster Dutch ships, so the race for an advantageous position along the coast had contributed to the scattering of the allied fleet. Juel later complained in a letter to the Danish Admiral of the Realm that the Dutch had not assisted him in pursuing the fleeing Swedes. He claimed that if he had received proper support, they could have "brought [the Swedes] such a fever on their throats that it would take years for all the doctors in Stockholm to cure it". When Tromp sent a report of the battle to the Danish King he reproached his subordinates, but not by name, and asked that no punishment be dealt out. The captain of 't Hoen, the fireship that had set Svärdet ablaze after she had surrendered, was arrested and incarcerated directly after the battle, and was subjected to such harsh treatment that he died within a few days. Tromp later reported that his ship Delft, which had seen some of the roughest fighting, had lost around 100 men and that most of its officers were wounded. ## Forces Below is a list of the ships that participated in the battle. The figures in parentheses indicate the number of guns for each ship.

Loggerhead sea turtle

Species of marine reptile distributed throughout the world

The loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) is a species of oceanic turtle distributed throughout the world. It is a marine reptile, belonging to the family Cheloniidae. The average loggerhead measures around 90 cm (35 in) in carapace length when fully grown. The adult loggerhead sea turtle weighs approximately 135 kg (298 lb), with the largest specimens weighing in at more than 450 kg (1,000 lb). The skin ranges from yellow to brown in color, and the shell is typically reddish brown. No external differences in sex are seen until the turtle becomes an adult, the most obvious difference being the adult males have thicker tails and shorter plastrons (lower shells) than the females. The loggerhead sea turtle is found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea. It spends most of its life in saltwater and estuarine habitats, with females briefly coming ashore to lay eggs. The loggerhead sea turtle has a low reproductive rate; females lay an average of four egg clutches and then become quiescent, producing no eggs for two to three years. The loggerhead reaches sexual maturity within 17–33 years and has a lifespan of 47–67 years. The loggerhead sea turtle is omnivorous, feeding mainly on bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Its large and powerful jaws serve as an effective tool for dismantling its prey. Young loggerheads are exploited by numerous predators; the eggs are especially vulnerable to terrestrial organisms. Once the turtles reach adulthood, their formidable size limits predation to large marine animals, such as large sharks. The loggerhead sea turtle is considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. In total, 9 distinct population segments are under the protection of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, with 4 population segments classified as "threatened" and 5 classified as "endangered" Commercial international trade of loggerheads or derived products is prohibited by CITES Appendix I. Untended fishing gear is responsible for many loggerhead deaths. The greatest threat is loss of nesting habitat due to coastal development, predation of nests, and human disturbances (such as coastal lighting and housing developments) that cause disorientations during the emergence of hatchlings. Turtles may also suffocate if they are trapped in fishing trawls. Turtle excluder devices have been implemented in efforts to reduce mortality by providing an escape route for the turtles. Loss of suitable nesting beaches and the introduction of exotic predators have also taken a toll on loggerhead populations. Efforts to restore their numbers will require international cooperation, since the turtles roam vast areas of ocean and critical nesting beaches are scattered across several countries. ## Taxonomy Carl Linnaeus gave the loggerhead its first binomial name, Testudo caretta, in 1758. Thirty-five other names emerged over the following two centuries, with the combination Caretta caretta first introduced in 1873 by Leonhard Stejneger. The English common name "loggerhead" refers to the animal's large head. The loggerhead sea turtle belongs to the family Cheloniidae, which includes all extant sea turtles except the leatherback sea turtle. The subspecific classification of the loggerhead sea turtle is debated, but most authors consider it a single polymorphic species. Molecular genetics has confirmed hybridization of the loggerhead sea turtle with the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, hawksbill sea turtle, and green sea turtles. The extent of natural hybridization is not yet determined; however, second-generation hybrids have been reported, suggesting some hybrids are fertile. ### Evolution Although evidence is lacking, modern sea turtles probably descended from a single common ancestor during the Cretaceous period. Like all other sea turtles except the leatherback, loggerheads are members of the ancient family Cheloniidae, and appeared about 40 million years ago. Of the six species of living Cheloniidae, loggerheads are more closely related to the Kemp's ridley sea turtle, olive ridley sea turtle, and the hawksbill turtle than they are to the flatback turtle and the green turtle. Around three million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch, Central America emerged from the sea, effectively cutting off currents between the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Oceans. The rerouting of ocean currents led to climatic changes as the Earth entered a glacial cycle. Cold water upwelling around the Cape of Good Hope and reduction in water temperature at Cape Horn formed coldwater barriers to migrating turtles. The result was a complete isolation of the Atlantic and Pacific populations of loggerheads. During the most recent ice age, the beaches of southeastern North America were too cold for sea turtle eggs. As the Earth began to warm, loggerheads moved farther north, colonizing the northern beaches. Because of this, turtles nesting between North Carolina and northern Florida represent a different genetic population from those in southern Florida. The distinct populations of loggerheads have unique characteristics and genetic differences. For example, Mediterranean loggerheads are smaller, on average, than Atlantic Ocean loggerheads. North Atlantic and Mediterranean loggerhead sea turtles are descendants of colonizing loggerheads from Tongaland, South Africa. South African loggerhead genes are still present in these populations today. ## Description The loggerhead sea turtle is the world's largest hard-shelled turtle, slightly larger at average and maximum mature weights than the green sea turtle and the Galapagos tortoise. It is also the world's second largest extant turtle after the leatherback sea turtle. Adults have an approximate weight range of 80 to 200 kg (180 to 440 lb), averaging around 135 kg (298 lb), and a straight-line carapace length range of 70 to 95 cm (28 to 37 in). The maximum reported weight is 545 kg (1,202 lb) and the maximum (presumed total) length is 213 cm (84 in). The head and carapace (upper shell) range from a yellow-orange to a reddish brown, while the plastron (underside) is typically pale yellow. The turtle's neck and sides are brown on the tops and yellow on the sides and bottom. The turtle's shell is divided into two sections: carapace and plastron. The carapace is further divided into large plates, or scutes. Typically, 11 or 12 pairs of marginal scutes rim the carapace. Five vertebral scutes run down the carapace's midline, while five pairs of costal scutes border them. The nuchal scute is located at the base of the head. The carapace connects to the plastron by three pairs of inframarginal scutes forming the bridge of the shell. The plastron features paired gular, humeral, pectoral, abdominal, femoral, and anal scutes. The shell serves as external armor, although loggerhead sea turtles cannot retract their heads or flippers into their shells. Sexual dimorphism of the loggerhead sea turtle is only apparent in adults. Adult males have longer tails and claws than females. The males' plastrons are shorter than the females', presumably to accommodate the males' larger tails. The carapaces of males are wider and less domed than the females', and males typically have wider heads than females. The sex of juveniles and subadults cannot be determined through external anatomy, but can be observed through dissection, laparoscopy (an operation performed on the abdomen), histological examination (cell anatomy), and radioimmunological assays (immune study dealing with radiolabeling). Lachrymal glands located behind each eye allow the loggerhead to maintain osmotic balance by eliminating the excess salt obtained from ingesting ocean water. On land, the excretion of excess salt gives the false impression that the turtle is crying. The urea content is high in Caretta caretta tears. The skull is most easily distinguished from other sea turtles by having maxillae that meet in the mid-line of the palate. The portion of skull behind the eyes is also relatively large and bulbous due to the extensive jaw muscles. ## Distribution The loggerhead sea turtle has a cosmopolitan distribution, nesting over the broadest geographical range of any sea turtle. It inhabits the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. In the Atlantic Ocean, the greatest concentration of loggerheads is along the southeastern coast of North America and in the Gulf of Mexico. Very few loggerheads are found along the European and African coastlines. Florida is the most popular nesting site, with more than 67,000 nests built per year. Nesting extends as far north as Virginia, as far south as Brazil, and as far east as the Cape Verde Islands. The Cape Verde Islands are the only significant nesting site on the eastern side of the Atlantic. Loggerheads found in the Atlantic Ocean feed from Canada to Brazil. In the Indian Ocean, loggerheads feed along the coastlines of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and in the Arabian Sea. Along the African coastline, loggerheads nest from Mozambique's Bazaruto Archipelago to South Africa's St Lucia estuary. The largest Indian Ocean nesting site is Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula, which hosts around 15,000 nests, giving it the second largest nesting population of loggerheads in the world. Western Australia is another notable nesting area, with 1,000–2,000 nests per year. Pacific loggerheads live in temperate to tropical regions. They forage in the East China Sea, the southwestern Pacific, and along the Baja California Peninsula. Eastern Australia and Japan are the major nesting areas, with the Great Barrier Reef deemed an important nesting area. Pacific loggerheads occasionally nest in Vanuatu and Tokelau. Yakushima Island is the most important site, with three nesting grounds visited by 40% of all nearby loggerheads. After nesting, females often find homes in the East China Sea, while the Kuroshio Current Extension's Bifurcation region provides important juvenile foraging areas. Eastern Pacific populations are concentrated off the coast of Baja California, where upwelling provides rich feeding grounds for juvenile turtles and subadults. Nesting sites along the eastern Pacific Basin are rare. mtDNA sequence polymorphism analysis and tracking studies suggest 95% of the population along the coast of the Americas hatch on the Japanese Islands in the western Pacific. The turtles are transported by the prevailing currents across the full length of the northern Pacific, one of the longest migration routes of any marine animal. The return journey to the natal beaches in Japan has been long suspected, although the trip would cross unproductive clear water with few feeding opportunities. Evidence of a return journey came from an adult female loggerhead named Adelita, which in 1996, equipped with a satellite tracking device, made the 14,500 km (9,000 mi) trip from Mexico across the Pacific. Adelita was the first animal of any kind ever tracked across an ocean basin. The Mediterranean Sea is a nursery for juveniles, as well as a common place for adults in the spring and summer months. Almost 45% of the Mediterranean juvenile population has migrated from the Atlantic. Loggerheads feed in the Alboran Sea and the Adriatic Sea, with tens of thousands of specimens (mainly sub-adult) seasonally present in the North-Eastern portion of the latter, above all in the area of the Po Delta. Greece is the most popular nesting site along the Mediterranean, with more than 3,000 nests per year. Zakynthos hosts the largest Mediterranean nesting with the second one being in Kyparissia Bay. Because of this, Greek authorities do not allow planes to take off or land at night in Zakynthos due to the nesting turtles. In addition to the Greek coast, the coastlines of Cyprus and Turkey are also common nesting sites. One record of this turtle was made in Ireland when a specimen washed ashore on Ballyhealy Beach in County Wexford. Another records one specimen being washed up on a beach in County Donegal, Ireland. ## Habitat Loggerhead sea turtles spend most of their lives in the open ocean and in shallow coastal waters. They rarely come ashore besides the females' brief visits to construct nests and deposit eggs. Hatchling loggerhead turtles live in floating mats of Sargassum algae. Adults and juveniles live along the continental shelf as well as in shallow coastal estuaries. In the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, age plays a factor in habitat preference. Juveniles are more frequently found in shallow estuarine habitats with limited ocean access compared to non-nesting adults. Loggerheads occupy waters with surface tempheratures ranging from 13.3–28 °C (56–82 °F) during non-nesting season. Temperatures from 27–28 °C (81–82 °F) are most suitable for nesting females. Juvenile loggerheads share the Sargassum habitat with a variety of other organisms. The mats of Sargassum contain as many as 100 different species of animals on which the juveniles feed. Prey found in Sargassum mats may include barnacles, crab larvae, fish eggs, and hydrozoan colonies. Some prey, such as ants, flies, aphids, leafhoppers, and beetles, are carried by the wind to the mats. Marine mammals and commercial fishes, including tuna and mahi-mahi, also inhabit the Sargassum mats. ## Behavior Loggerhead sea turtles observed in captivity and in the wild are most active during the day. In captivity, the loggerheads' daily activities are divided between swimming and resting on the bottom. While resting, they spread their forelimbs to about midstroke swimming position. They remain motionless with eyes open or half-shut and are easily alerted during this state. At night, captives sleep in the same position with their eyes tightly shut, and are slow to react. Loggerheads spend up to 85% of their day submerged, with males being the more active divers than females. The average duration of dives is 15–30 min, but they can stay submerged for up to four hours. Juvenile loggerheads and adults differ in their swimming methods. A juvenile keeps its forelimbs pressed to the side of its carapace, and propels itself by kicking with its hind limbs. As the juvenile matures, its swimming method is progressively replaced with the adult's alternating-limb method. They depend entirely on this method of swimming by one year old. Water temperature affects the sea turtle's metabolic rate. Lethargy is induced at temperatures between 13 and 15 °C (55 and 59 °F). The loggerhead takes on a floating, cold-stunned posture when temperatures drop to around 10 °C (50 °F). However, younger loggerheads are more resistant to cold and do not become stunned until temperatures drop below 9 °C (48 °F). The loggerheads' migration helps to prevent instances of cold-stunning. Higher water temperatures cause an increase in metabolism and heart rate. A loggerhead's body temperature increases in warmer waters more quickly than it decreases in colder water; their critical thermal maximum is currently unknown. In February 2015, a live loggerhead turtle was found floating in British Columbian waters of 10.5 °C (50.9 °F) with extensive algal growth on its carapace. Female-female aggression, which is fairly rare in other marine vertebrates, is common among loggerheads. Ritualized aggression escalates from passive threat displays to combat. This conflict primarily occurs over access to feeding grounds. Escalation typically follows four steps. First, initial contact is stimulated by visual or tactile cues. Second, confrontation occurs, beginning with passive confrontations characterized by wide head-tail circling. They begin aggressive confrontation when one turtle ceases to circle and directly faces the other. Third, sparring occurs with turtles snapping at each other's jaws. The final stage, separation, is either mutual, with both turtles swimming away in opposite directions, or involves chasing one out of the immediate vicinity. Escalation is determined by several factors, including hormone levels, energy expenditure, expected outcome, and importance of location. At all stages, an upright tail shows willingness to escalate, while a curled tail shows willingness to submit. Because higher aggression is metabolically costly and potentially debilitating, contact is much more likely to escalate when the conflict is over access to good foraging grounds. Further aggression has also been reported in captive loggerheads. The turtles are seemingly territorial, and will fight with other loggerheads and sea turtles of different species. ### Feeding The loggerhead sea turtle is omnivorous, feeding mainly on bottom-dwelling invertebrates, such as gastropods, bivalves, decapods, and horseshoe crabs. It has a greater list of known prey than any other sea turtle. Other food items include sponges, corals, sea pens, polychaete worms, tube worms, sea anemones, cephalopods, barnacles, brachiopods, amphipods, isopods, Portuguese men o' war, insects, bryozoans, hydrozoans, sea urchins, sand dollars, sea cucumbers, starfish, tunicates, fish (eggs, juveniles, and adults), hatchling turtles (including members of its own species), algae, and vascular plants. During migration through the open sea, loggerheads eat jellyfish, floating molluscs, floating egg clusters, squid, and flying fish. Loggerheads crush prey with their large and powerful jaws. Projecting scale points on the anterior margin of the forelimbs allow manipulation of the food. These points can be used as "pseudo-claws" to tear large pieces of food in the loggerhead's mouth. The loggerhead will turn its neck sideways to consume the torn food on the scale points. Inward-pointing, mucus-covered papillae found in the fore region of the loggerhead's esophagus filter out foreign bodies, such as fish hooks. The next region of the esophagus is not papillated, with numerous mucosal folds. The digestion rate in loggerheads is temperature-dependent; it increases as temperature increases. ### Predators Loggerheads have numerous predators, especially early in their lives. Egg and nestling predators include ghost crabs, oligochaete worms, beetles, fly larvae, ants, flesh flies, snakes, gulls, corvids, opossums, bears, rats, armadillos, mustelids, skunks, canids, procyonids, cats, pigs, and humans. During their migration from their nests to the sea, hatchlings are preyed on by dipteran larvae, crabs, toads, lizards, snakes, seabirds such as frigatebirds, and other assorted birds and mammals. In the ocean, predators of the loggerhead juveniles include portunid crabs and various fishes, such as parrotfishes and moray eels. Adults are more rarely attacked due to their large size, but may be preyed on by large sharks, seals, and killer whales. Nesting females are attacked by flesh flies, feral dogs, and humans. Salt marsh mosquitos can also pester nesting females. In Australia, the introduction of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) by British settlers in the 19th century led to significant reductions in loggerhead sea turtle populations. In one coastal section in eastern Australia during the 1970s, predation of turtle eggs destroyed up to 95% of all clutches laid. Aggressive efforts to destroy foxes in the 1980s and 1990s has reduced this impact; however, it is estimated that it will be the year 2020 before populations will experience complete recovery from such dramatic losses. Along the southeastern coast of the United States, the raccoon (Procyon lotor) is the most destructive predator of nesting sites. Mortality rates of nearly 100% of all clutches laid in a season have been recorded on some Florida beaches. This is attributed to an increase in raccoon populations, which have flourished in urban environments. Aggressive efforts to protect nesting sites by covering them with wire mesh has significantly reduced the impact of raccoon predation on loggerhead sea turtle eggs. Up to 40% of nesting females around the world have wounds believed to come from shark attacks. ### Disease and parasites Infectious bacteria such as Pseudomonas and Salmonella attack loggerhead hatchlings and eggs. Fungi such as Penicillium infect loggerhead sea turtle nests and cloacae. Fibropapillomatosis disease caused by a form of the herpes-type virus threatens loggerheads with internal and external tumors. These tumors disrupt essential behaviors and, if on the eyes, cause permanent blindness. Trematodes of the family Spirorchiidae inhabit tissues throughout the body of the loggerhead, including vital organs, such as the heart and the brain. Trematode infection can be highly debilitating. For example, inflammatory trematode lesions can cause endocarditis and neurological disease. A nematode, Angiostoma carettae, also infects loggerheads, causing histologic lesions in the respiratory tract. More than 100 species of animals from 13 phyla, as well as 37 kinds of algae, live on loggerheads' backs. These parasitic organisms, which increase drag, offer no known benefit to the turtle, although the dulling effect of organisms on shell color may improve camouflage. In 2018, researchers from Florida State University examined 24 individual turtle carapaces and found an average of 33,000 meiofauna with one turtle having 150,000 organisms living on the shell. A collection of 7,000 nematodes from 111 genera were found on the turtles studied. ## Life history ### Early life Hatchlings range in color from light brown to almost black, lacking the adult's distinct yellows and reds. Upon hatching, they measure about 4.6 cm (1.8 in) and weigh about 20 g (0.7 oz). The eggs are typically laid on the beach in an area above the high-tide line. The eggs are laid near the water so the hatchlings can return to the sea. The loggerhead's sex is dictated by the temperature of the underground nest. Incubation temperatures generally range from 26–32 °C (79–90 °F). Sea turtle eggs kept at a constant incubating temperature of 32 °C become females. Eggs incubating at 28 °C become males. An incubation temperature of 30 °C results in an equal ratio of male to female hatchlings. Hatchlings from eggs in the middle of the clutch tend to be the largest, grow the fastest, and be the most active during the first few days of sea life. After incubating for around 80 days, hatchlings dig through the sand to the surface, usually at night, when darkness increases the chance of escaping predation and damage from extreme sand surface temperatures is reduced. Hatchlings enter the ocean by navigating toward the brighter horizon created by the reflection of the moon and starlight off the water's surface. Hatchlings can lose up to 20% of their body mass due to evaporation of water as they journey from nest to ocean. They initially use the undertow to push them five to 10 m away from the shore. Once in the ocean, they swim for about 20 hours, taking them far offshore. An iron compound, magnetite, in their brains allows the turtles to perceive the Earth's magnetic field, for navigation. Many hatchlings use Sargassum in the open ocean as protection until they reach 45 cm (18 in). Hatchling loggerheads live in this pelagic environment until they reach juvenile age, and then they migrate to nearshore waters. ### Maturation When ocean waters cool, loggerheads must migrate to warmer areas or hibernate to some degree. In the coldest months, they submerge for up to seven hours at a time, emerging for only seven minutes to breathe. Although outdone by freshwater turtles, these are among the longest recorded dives for any air-breathing marine vertebrate. During their seasonal migration, juvenile loggerheads have the ability to use both magnetic and visual cues. When both aids are available, they are used in conjunction; if one aid is not available, the other suffices. The turtles swim at about 1.6 km/h (0.9 kn; 0.4 m/s) during migration. Like all marine turtles, the loggerhead prepares for reproduction in its foraging area. This takes place several years before the loggerhead migrates to a mating area. Female loggerheads first reproduce at ages 28–33 in Southeastern United States and Australia, and at ages 17–30 in South Africa. Age at first reproduction in the Mediterranean, Oman, Japan, and Brazil are unknown. Nesting loggerheads have a straight carapace length of 70–109 cm (28–43 in). Because of the large range, carapace length is not a reliable indicator of sexual maturity. Their estimated maximum lifespan is 47–67 years in the wild. ### Reproduction Female loggerheads first reproduce between the ages of 17 and 33, and their mating period may last more than six weeks. They court their mates, but these behaviors have not been thoroughly examined. Male forms of courtship behavior include nuzzling, biting, and head and flipper movements. Studies suggest females produce cloacal pheromones to indicate reproductive ability. Before mating, the male approaches a female and attempts to mount her, while she resists. Next, the male and female begin to circle each other. If the male has competitors, the female may let the males struggle with each other. The winner then mounts the female; the male's curved claws usually damage the shoulders of the female's shell during this process. Other courting males bite the male while he is attempting to copulate, damaging his flippers and tail, possibly exposing bones. Such damage can cause the male to dismount and may require weeks to heal. While nesting, females produce an average of 3.9 egg clutches, and then become quiescent, producing no eggs for two to three years. Unlike other sea turtles, courtship and mating usually do not take place near the nesting beach, but rather along migration routes between feeding and breeding grounds. Recent evidence indicates ovulation in loggerheads is mating-induced. Through the act of mating, the female ovulates eggs which are fertilized by the male. This is unique, as mating-induced ovulation is rare outside of mammals. In the Northern Hemisphere, loggerheads mate from late March to early June. The nesting season is short, between May and August in the Northern Hemisphere and between October and March in the Southern Hemisphere. Loggerheads may display multiple paternity. Multiple paternity is possible due to sperm storage. The female can store sperm from multiple males in her oviducts until ovulation. A single clutch may have as many as seven fathers, each contributing sperm to a portion of the clutch. Multiple paternity and female size are positively correlated. Two hypotheses explain this correlation. One posits that males favor large females because of their perceived higher fecundity (ability to reproduce). The other states, because larger females are able to swim more quickly to mating grounds, they have longer mating periods. All sea turtles have similar basic nesting behaviors. Females return to lay eggs at intervals of 12–17 days during the nesting season, on or near the beach where they hatched. They exit the water, climb the beach, and scrape away the surface sand to form a body pit. With their hind limbs, they excavate an egg chamber in which the eggs are deposited. The females then cover the egg chamber and body pit with sand, and finally return to the sea. This process takes one to two hours, and occurs in open sand areas or on top of sand dunes, preferably near dune grasses that the females can use to camouflage the nest. The nesting area must be selected carefully because it affects characteristics such as fitness, emergence ratio, and vulnerability to nest predators. Loggerheads have an average clutch size of 112.4 eggs. ## Conservation Many human activities have negative effects on loggerhead sea turtle populations. The prolonged time required for loggerheads to reach sexual maturity and the high mortality rates of eggs and young turtles from natural phenomena compound the problems of population reduction as a consequence of human activities. ### Threats Loggerhead sea turtles were once intensively hunted for their meat and eggs; consumption has decreased, however, due to worldwide legislation. Despite this, turtle meat and eggs are still consumed in countries where regulations are not strictly enforced. In Mexico, turtle eggs are a common meal; locals claim the egg is an aphrodisiac. Eating turtle eggs or meat can cause serious illness due to harmful bacteria, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Serratia marcescens, and high levels of toxic metals that build up through bioaccumulation. The US West Coast is a critical migratory corridor for the Pacific loggerheads, in which these turtles swim across the Pacific to California's coast from breeding grounds in Japan. Important foraging habitats for juveniles in the central North Pacific have been revealed through telemetry studies. Along with these foraging habitats, high levels of bycatch from industrial-scale fisheries have been found to overlap; with drift gillnets in the past and longline fisheries presently. Many juvenile loggerheads aggregate off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, where small coastal fisheries increase these turtles' mortality risk; fishers have reported catching dozens of loggerheads with bottom-set gear per day per boat. The most common commercial fishery that accidentally takes loggerheads are bottom trawls used for shrimp vessels in the Gulf of California. In 2000, between 2,600 and 6,000 loggerheads were estimated to have been killed by pelagic longlining in the Pacific. Fishing gear is the biggest threat to loggerheads in the open ocean. They often become entangled in longlines or gillnets. According to the 2009 status review of loggerheads by the Fisheries Service, drowning from entanglement in longline and gillnet fishing gear is the turtles' primary threat in the North Pacific. They also become stuck in traps, pots, trawls, and dredges. Caught in this unattended equipment, loggerheads risk serious injury or drowning. Turtle excluder devices for nets and other traps reduce the number being accidentally caught. Nearly 11 million metric tons of plastic are released into the ocean annually. A number that is projected to increase to 29 million metric tons by 2040. Turtles ingest a wide array of this floating debris, including bags, sheets, pellets, balloons and abandoned fishing line. Loggerheads may mistake the floating plastic for jellyfish, a common food item. The ingested plastic causes numerous health concerns, including intestinal blockage, reduced nutrient absorption and malnutrition, suffocation, ulcerations, or starvation. Ingested plastics release toxic compounds, including polychlorinated biphenyls, which may accumulate in internal tissues. Such toxins may lead to a thinning of eggshells, tissue damage, or deviation from natural behaviors. Artificial lighting discourages nesting and interferes with the hatchlings' ability to navigate to the water's edge. Females prefer nesting on beaches free of artificial lighting. On developed beaches, nests are often clustered around tall buildings, perhaps because they block out the man-made light sources. Loggerhead hatchlings are drawn toward the brighter area over the water which is the consequence of the reflection of moon and star light. Confused by the brighter artificial light, they navigate inland, away from the protective waters, which exposes them to dehydration and predation as the sun rises. Artificial lighting causes tens of thousands of hatchling deaths per year. Destruction and encroachment of habitat by humans is another threat to loggerhead sea turtles. Optimum nesting beaches are open-sand beaches above the high-tide line. However, beach development deprives them of suitable nesting areas, forcing them to nest closer to the surf. Urbanization often leads to the siltation of sandy beaches, decreasing their viability. Construction of docks and marinas can destroy near-shore habitats. Boat traffic and dredging degrades habitat and can also injure or kill turtles when boats collide with turtles at or near the surface. Annual variations in climatic temperatures can affect sex ratios, since loggerheads have temperature-dependent sex determination. High sand temperatures may skew gender ratios in favor of females. Nesting sites exposed to unseasonably warm temperatures over a three-year period produced 87–99% females. This raises concern over the connection between rapid global temperature changes and the possibility of population extinction. A more localized effect on gender skewing comes from the construction of tall buildings, which reduce sun exposure, lowering the average sand temperature, which results in a shift in gender ratios to favor the emergence of male turtles. Construction of new thermal power stations can raise local water temperature, which is also said to be a threat. The increase of temperature and food availability will increase reproduction output of loggerhead turtles. Many researchers agree that temperature increases due to climate change has a complicated impact on turtles. At breeding sites when a loggerhead turtle lays multiple clutches in a season, a higher temperature will cause the duration of time between laying two different nests to become shorter. The amount of food availability makes a difference in reproductive output because when there is a greater amount of food available, the turtles will grow to a larger size. The larger a turtle is, the more likely they will have a greater reproductive output. The amount of food also has a relationship to temperature. Researchers have found that an increase of temperature causes feeding grounds to produce more food. Tropical Cyclones have a significant impact on hatchling loss. The associated storm surges push water higher up the beach, flooding nest and drowning the embryos. Strong wave action may eroded away sand, exposing the eggs to drying and predation. The current trend of rising sea surface temperatures and the increase in both numbers and intensities of tropical cyclones as a result of climate change pose a growing threat to turtle populations. ### Conservation efforts Since the loggerhead occupies such a broad range, successful conservation requires efforts from multiple countries. Loggerhead sea turtles are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and are listed under Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, making commercial international trade prohibited. In the United States, the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service classify them as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. Loggerheads are listed as endangered under both Australia's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and Queensland's Nature Conservation Act 1992. The Convention on Migratory Species works for the conservation of loggerhead sea turtles on the Atlantic coast of Africa, as well as in the Indian Ocean and southeast Asia. Throughout Japan, the Sea Turtle Association of Japan aids in the conservation of loggerhead sea turtles. Greece's ARCHELON works for their conservation. The Marine Research Foundation works for loggerhead conservation in Oman. Annex 2 of the Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife Protocol of the Cartagena Convention, which deals with pollution that could harm marine ecosystems, also protects them. Conservation organizations worldwide have worked with the shrimp trawling industry to develop turtle exclusion devices (TEDs) to exclude even the largest turtles. TEDs are mandatory for all shrimp trawlers. In many places during the nesting season, workers and volunteers search the coastline for nests, and researchers may also go out during the evening to look for nesting females for tagging studies and gather barnacles and tissues samples. Volunteers may, if necessary, relocate the nests for protection from threats, such as high spring tides and predators, and monitor the nests daily for disturbances. After the eggs hatch, volunteers uncover and tally hatched eggs, undeveloped eggs, and dead hatchlings. Any remaining live hatchlings are released or taken to research facilities. Typically, those that lack the vitality to hatch and climb to the surface die. ## Symbols The loggerhead sea turtle appears on the \$1000 Colombian peso coin. In the United States, the loggerhead sea turtle is the official state reptile of South Carolina and also the state saltwater reptile of Florida. ## See also - Adelita, the first sea turtle tracked across an ocean basin. - Loggerhead sea turtle policies of the Barack Obama administration (2009–2017) - İztuzu Beach, one of the prime nesting habitats of the loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean - Sea turtle threats

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin

Painting by Rogier van der Weyden

Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin is a large oil and tempera on oak panel painting, usually dated between 1435 and 1440, attributed to the Early Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. Housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, it shows Luke the Evangelist, patron saint of artists, sketching the Virgin Mary as she nurses the Child Jesus. The figures are positioned in a bourgeois interior which leads out towards a courtyard, river, town and landscape. The enclosed garden, illusionistic carvings of Adam and Eve on the arms of Mary's throne, and attributes of St Luke are amongst the painting's many iconographic symbols. Van der Weyden was strongly influenced by Jan van Eyck, and the painting is very similar to the earlier Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, usually dated to around 1434, with significant differences. The figure's positioning and colourisation are reversed, and Luke takes centre stage; his face is accepted as van der Weyden's self-portrait. Three near contemporary versions are in the Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and the Groeningemuseum, Bruges. The Boston panel is widely considered the original from underdrawings that are both heavily reworked and absent in other versions. It is in relatively poor condition, having suffered considerable damage, which remains despite extensive restoration and cleaning. The painting's historical significance rests both on the skill behind the design and its merging of earthly and divine realms. By positioning himself in the same space as the Madonna, and showing a painter in the act of portrayal, Van der Weyden brings to the fore the role of artistic creativity in 15th-century society. The panel became widely influential with near copies by the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula and Hugo van der Goes. ## Commission There are no surviving contemporary archival documents for Rogier van der Weyden's Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin, but art historians agree that it was almost certainly painted for the Brussels painters' guild, for their chapel at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, where van der Weyden is buried. It may have been commissioned to celebrate the artist's appointment as city painter for Brussels. Luke the Evangelist was thought to have been a portraitist, and Northern European painters' guilds were considered to be under his protection. In the 15th-century images of Luke painting the Virgin were more commonly found in Northern rather than Italian art. Luke was credited with painting the original of the immensely popular Italo-Byzantine Cambrai Madonna, to which numerous miracles were attributed. The original of that work was taken to France from Rome in 1440, and within four years at least 15 high quality copies had been made. It was regarded as an example of St Luke's skill, and contemporary painters strove to emulate him in their depictions of Mary. Popular belief held that the essence of the Virgin was captured in Luke's portrait of her. ## After van Eyck Van der Weyden closely follows van Eyck's c. 1435 Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, though there are significant differences. The landscape in the van der Weyden is less detailed, and its top gives less of an illusion of openness than van Eyck's. The most obvious similarity is the two figures standing at a bridge, who may not carry specific identities; those in the van der Weyden are sometimes identified as Joachim and Anne, the Virgin's parents. In van Eyck's painting the right hand figure wears a red turban, a motif widely accepted as that artist's indicator of a self-portrait; similar images can be found on the London Portrait of a Man and the reflection in the knight's shield in the Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele, Bruges. Van der Weyden reverses the positioning of the main figures; the Virgin appears to the left, a positioning that became predominant in later Netherlandish diptychs. The colours in this work are warmer than those in the van Eyck. Van der Weyden switches the colours of their costumes; Luke is dressed in red or scarlet, Mary in the more typical warm blues. The Virgin type has further been changed, here she is depicted as a Maria Lactans ("Nursing Madonna"). This is one of the standard depictions of her, different from the Hodegetria (Our Lady of the Way, or She who points the way) Virgin type most usually associated with Byzantine and Northern 15th-century depictions of St Luke. This depiction of Mary's motherhood stresses the "redemption of mankind by Christ as human ... [and] spiritual nourishing". ## Description The panel contains four individual pieces of oak, painted over a chalk ground bound with glue. The preparation wood is dated to around 1410, giving an estimated date for the Van der Weyden in the mid-1430s. The dominant pigments are lead white (often used in the panel to highlight blue and green passages), charcoal black, ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow, verdigris and red lake. There has been some discolouration – some greens are now brown, including pigments used to depict grass in the background. Mary sits under a brocade canopy or cloth of honour, painted in brown hues which have since discoloured to dark green. The canopy hangs down to a wooden bench attached to the wall behind her. Mary's hair is loose and she wears an embroidered dress lined with fur. Around her neck is a light veil, and she is shown in the act of nursing. Her dress is a centrepiece of the panel, composed of a variety of blues overlaid with lead white and deep blue lapis lazuli highlights. The inner parts of her robe contain violet coloured fabrics, lined with greyish blues and purples. Luke is positioned on a green cushion, between the heavenly figure and the small study behind him. He is either rising from a kneeling position or about to genuflect. His eyes fix on her attentively, and he seems near hypnotised. Jesus is similarly transfixed. Hall describes Luke's hands as floating before him, holding the tools "with the same delicacy that an angel might hold a lily or sceptre". Mary has turned her face so that he can depict her in near full profile, a rare honour, while Luke's kneeling position is closely analogous to that of a typical donor portrait in the presence of the Virgin. Luke is beardless and in his early 40s, close to van der Weyden's age in the mid-1430s. His face is not idealised; he is middle-aged with light stubble and greying hair. The room behind him contains his attributes including an ox and an open book representing his Gospel. He is painted with more naturalism than Mary; his eyes in particular are more realistically drawn. Christ's conform to the then idealised form, as simple crescents. Mary's are formed from curved lines typical of late Gothic ideals of feminine beauty. Compared to contemporary paintings of this type, the work is unusually free of inscriptions; they appear only on items in Luke's study, dimly perceived on his right: on a book, on an ink bottle, and on a scroll emanating from the mouth of his ox, beneath the small desk. The scene is set within a rather narrow interior space, with a barrel vault ceiling, patterned floor tilings, and stained glass windows. The outer wall opens to the midground, with a patch of grass and plants, and has a view of a river or inlet. Art historian Jeffrey Chipps Smith notes how the transition between the grounds establishes a "complex spatial space in which [van der Weyden] achieved an almost seamless movement from the elaborate architecture of the main room to the garden and parapet of the middle ground to the urban and rural landscape behind". Two figures in the mid-ground stand at a battlement wall overlooking the water, their backs turned against the viewer, the male pointing outwards. They are framed by columns, and are looking towards the detailed city and landscape in the background. The figures seem preoccupied with "looking", which Carol Purtle believes, to van der Weyden, was a form of devotionalism; through meditating on an image, the "beholder experienced visions of transports of ecstasy". Technical analysis shows that both figures were heavily reworked both in the underdrawing and the final painting; the hood of the figure on the right was originally red, but over-painted as black, amongst many other differences. The positioning of these figures closely resembles that of two persons depicted in the van Eyck panel. In that painting the right-hand figure turns to face his companion, gesturing at him to look outwards. In the van der Weyden, the equivalent figure seems protective of his friend, who here is female, while the left-hand figure in the earlier panel might represent a tribute to the artist's brother Hubert who had died in the 1420s. A red headdress was an indicator of self-portraiture for van Eyck. As in the van Eyck, the figures act as examples of repoussoir, in that they draw our attention to the picture's underlying theme – the painting's ability to visualize the infinity of the world in the landscape. The painting may allude to the concept of paragone; the man points to the landscape, perhaps highlighting the ability of painting, unlike sculpture, to supply its foreground with background. Examination of the underdrawing shows that the artist intended a van Eyckian angel crowning the Virgin, but this was omitted from the final painting. He heavily reworked the positions of the three main figures even towards the end of completion. The draperies of the mantles were at first larger. Christ's body at first faced Luke, but was later tilted in the direction of his mother. The mother and child were brought closer together. Luke's head was at first level with the Virgin's, but in the final painting is raised slightly above. The differences extend beyond those in the foreground. The fortifications of the inner courtyard have been enlarged, while the two figures looking out over the river were smaller, the river itself narrower. ## Self-portrait Luke's face is widely considered to be a van der Weyden self-portrait. He may have wanted to associate himself both with a saint and with the founder of painting. This is reinforced by the fact that Luke is shown drawing in silverpoint on white paper; an extremely difficult medium that demands high concentration, and is normally used only for preparation. The artist is boldly emphasising his ability and skill with preparatory sketches; a single surviving silverpoint drawing attributed to van der Weyden, now in the Louvre, contains a female head very similar to Mary's in the Boston panel. Van der Weyden appears intelligent and handsome, but weather-worn. He inserted a self-portrait into one other work; the lost Justice of Trajan and Herkinbald, known through a tapestry copy in the Historical Museum of Bern. Later northern artists followed his lead, using self-portraits in their own depictions of Luke. What biographical details are available place the artist as a devout Catholic, deeply influenced by mystical and devotional texts, familiar with 12th and 13th century female theologians such as Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hildegard of Bingen. They believed that contemplating devotional images whilst meditating might lead to a vision or a state of ecstasy. It is possible from these teachings that van der Weyden developed a set of devotional motifs such as The Magdalen Reading. The importance of St Luke in Christian art is underscored in St Luke Painting the Virgin, while affirming "the role of art within the context of meditation and contemplation". The self-portraiture achieves a number of purposes. It acts as a tribute to his own ability, as a measure of his skill against van Eyck, and as a case for the legitimacy of the craft of painting. By portraying himself as St Luke in the act of drawing rather than painting, De Vries believes van der Weyden reveals an "artistic consciousness by commenting upon artistic traditions and by doing so presents a visual argument for the role and function of the artist and his art, one at that time still predominantly religiously defined". Smith describes the panel as an "exposition of the art of painting", observing that van der Weyden records the essential skills any successful artist should master while claiming to be an heir to St Luke. He works in silverpoint – and thus is unencumbered with the paraphernalia of painting; an easel, seat or other items which might clutter the composition, or more importantly place a physical barrier between the divine and earthly realms. ## Iconography The painting is rich in both actual and implied iconography. Van der Weyden presents Mary as the Maria Lactans virgin type, a symbol of "Mother Church" especially popular at times of plague or famine, the implication being that she cares for all and no one will go hungry. This notion ties in with Luke's dual roles of physician (and thus healer) and artist. Van der Weyden had earlier portrayed Mary breast-feeding in his Virgin and Child Enthroned, which depicts equally detailed carvings carrying significance, but is reduced in size and in its cast of characters, and omits the act of beholding. The architecture of the enclosed space suggests a church. The Virgin sits beneath a canopy, perhaps symbolic of the sacred space, and the spatial separation between the celebrant and the congregation, usually by a Rood screen. The small room to the right could symbolize the vesting chamber. The arms of her throne are painted as carved with figures including Adam, Eve and the serpent before the fall from Paradise. The room faces towards an enclosed garden, another emblem of the Virgin's chastity. Though Mary is positioned by a throne and under a canopy, indicating her role as Queen of Heaven, she sits on the step, an indication of her humility. The Virgin occupies an earthly space as opposed to a sacred one, but remains aloof. This approach is emphasised by secondary midground figures who are out in the open air, while the main figures are positioned in an elevated room containing a throne, grand arches and wood carvings. Van der Weyden's setting is less artificial than van Eyck's; here Luke and Mary face each other as equals, rather than in van Eyck's painting where, as Blum describes "a divinity and a mortal" face one another. Van der Weyden omits the winged angel holding a crown hovering above the Virgin; the figure was included in the underdrawings, but eventually abandoned. The landscape is more secular than van Eyck's, which is dominated by church spires. In the late-13th century, many of the newly emerging painter's guilds were nominating Luke as their patron saint. The van der Weyden panel is among the first known depictions of St Luke painting the Virgin in Northern Renaissance art, along with a similar work, a lost triptych panel by Robert Campin. Van der Weyden presents a humanised Virgin and Child, as suggested by the realistic contemporary surroundings, the lack of halos, and the intimate spatial construction. Yet he infuses the panel with extensive religious iconography. ## Attribution and dating During the 19th century the painting was at times associated with Quentin Massys and Hugo van der Goes. In the early 1930s, based on X-radiographs, art historian Alan Burroughs attributed the Boston painting to Dieric Bouts "under the supervision" of van der Weyden. He later revised his opinion to van der Weyden, but art historians remained unsure as to which of the four panel versions was the original or prime version and which were copies. Infrared reflectography has revealed underdrawing in the Boston version which contains heavy redrafting and re-working. This is absent in the other versions, strong evidence the Boston panel is prime. The approach to the underdrawing is very similar to the paintings where attribution to van der Weyden is established, such as the Descent from the Cross in Madrid, and the Miraflores Altarpiece in Berlin. They are built up with brush and ink, with the most attention given to the outlines of the figures and draperies. Hatching is used to indicate areas of deep shadow. In each, the underdrawing is a working sketch, subject to constant revisions, which continued even after painting had begun. The drawing of Mary is similar to the Louvre's silverpoint drawing of 1464 attributed to his circle. Both are of a type van der Weyden was preoccupied with, showing "an ongoing refinement and emphasis on [Mary's] youthfulness ... [which is] traceable throughout his work". Art historians gradually revised their dating from 1450 to the currently accepted 1435–40, earlier in the artist's career. This estimate is based on three factors; the dating of the Rolin Madonna, van der Weyden's opportunity of viewing that panel, and his ability to produce his own work after such a viewing. He is known to have visited Brussels – where van Eyck kept his studio – in 1432 and again 1435. Erwin Panofsky suggested c. 1434 as the earliest possible date, and that the Rolin panel was completed in 1433 or 1434. Julius Held was sceptical of this early dating, noting that if true we are "forced to assume that within one year of Jan's work Rogier received a commission which gave him an opportunity to adopt Jan's compositional pattern while subjecting it at the same time to a very thorough and highly personal transformation, and all this in Bruges, under Jan's very eyes". Held, as a lone voice and writing in 1955, argues for a date between 1440 and 1443, seeing the work as more advanced than other paintings by the artist from the mid-1430s, and believes it contains "considerable differences" when compared to other early works, especially the Annunciation Triptych of c. 1434. He further observes that although the painting became highly influential, copies did not appear until the mid-century. Dendrochronological examination of the growth rings in the panel's wood suggests that the timber was felled around 1410. In the 15th century, wood was typically stored for around 20 years before use in panel painting, giving an earliest date in the mid to late 1430s. Analysis of the Munich version places it in the 1480s, around 20 years after van der Weyden's death. The panel in Bruges is in the best condition and of exceptional quality, but dates from c. 1491–1510. ## Provenance and conservation Despite the eminence of the painting and its many copies, little is known of its provenance before the 19th century. It seems likely that it is the painting Albrecht Dürer mentions in his diary recollection of his visit to the Low Countries in 1520. It is probably the same work recorded in a 1574 inventory of Philip II, kept at the Escorial. The painting is recorded in 1835 in the collection of Don Infante Sebastián Gabriel Borbón y Braganza, a grandnephew of Charles III of Spain and himself an artist. Gabriel's inventory notes described the panel in detail, attributed it to Lucas van Leyden, and suggested an earlier restoration. It was donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1893 by Henry Lee Higginson after his purchase at a New York auction in 1889. Photographs from 1914 show it in an ornate, decorative frame which is probably the same as in Gabriel's 1835 description. The panel is in poor condition, with substantial damage to its frame and surface, despite at least four restorations. The earliest recorded restoration was in 1893, the year it was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, but there are no surviving records of the treatment. In the early 1930s, the museum's curator of paintings, Philip Henry, described the painting as an original van der Weyden, but gave the opinion that its poor condition was hindering wider acceptance of the attribution. On this basis, it was sent to Germany in 1932 to undergo conservation. The effort was led by the restorer Helmut Ruhemann, who described the panel as "structurally sound", and removed layers of discoloured varnish and "crude overpainting", while filling in some areas of paint loss. Ruhemann believed he had found evidence of at least two major 19th-century restorations, one of which was probably that carried out in Boston in 1893. Ruhemann's cleaning and restoration was widely praised, and contributed to the acceptance of the panel as the original by van der Weyden. The MFA undertook a third restoration in 1943, when some yellowing of the glaze was repaired. Most recently, the painting was cleaned in 1980 when small amounts of grime were removed, some losses were filled in, and a light coat of varnish was applied. ## Influence If the painting was in the Guild of Saint Luke's chapel in Brussels, then many near-contemporary artists would have been able to view it. Van der Weyden's interpretation was hugely influential during the mid-15th and early-16th centuries, both in free and faithful adaptations and copies, examples of which are in Brussels, Kassel, Valladolid and Barcelona. This reflects its quality, and the fact that he presents an ideal image of an artist as a self-portrait, legitimising and elevating the trade. Also influential was his Madonna type, which he used again for the c. 1450 Diptych of Jean de Gros. That painting features a 'Virgin and Child' wing directly modelled on his St Luke panel, extending the devotional aspect to include a donor who appears in the same panel with her. In combining the patron with the Virgin, the "artist has made that personal devotion an integral part of the image". Depictions of Luke drawing the Virgin rose in popularity in the mid-to-late 15th century, with van der Weyden's panel the earliest known from the Low Countries – Campin's earlier treatment was by then lost. Most were free copies (adaptations) of van der Weyden's design. The anonymous painter known as the Master of the Legend of St. Ursula incorporated the Maria Lactans type for his Virgin and Child, now in New York. Other artists producing works directly influenced by van der Weyden's portrait include Hugo van der Goes, Dieric Bouts, Derick Baegert and Jan Gossaert. Some artists copied van der Weyden by placing their own likeness in place of St Luke, notably Simon Marmion and Maarten van Heemskerck. By representing themselves as Luke, artists implied a depiction of the Virgin based on first hand contact and thus giving her true likeness. Van der Goes's is the earliest extant autographed version, and one of the most important. This panel was originally a diptych wing of which the accompanying panel of the Virgin and Child is lost, and was probably made for a guild. Luke is dressed in a heavy red robe, draws a preparatory sketch in silverpoint, and wears a melancholy expression. Building on van der Weyden's theme of the role, practice and craft of an artist, van der Goes places pieces of charcoal, a knife and the feathers of a small bird in front of the saint. The similarities to the van der Weyden are many and striking, and include the painting utensils, red robes, physician's cap and blue mantle. The figure has the same middle-aged facial type and his pose, kneeling on a green cushion, although reversed compared to van der Weyden's, is the same. Van der Goes's adaption both increased van der Weyden's standing in the eyes of the later artist's followers, and led to a new group of copies that were modelled on the later painting. A tapestry version woven in Brussels c. 1500 is now in the Louvre. It was probably designed using a reversed drawing of the painting. ### Left panel ## See also - List of works by Rogier van der Weyden

Altrincham

Town in Greater Manchester, England

Altrincham (/ˈɒltrɪŋəm/ OL-tring-əm, locally /ˈɒltrɪŋɡəm/) is a market town in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, south of the River Mersey. It is 8 miles (13 km) southwest of Manchester, 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Sale and 10 miles (16 km) east of Warrington. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 52,419. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Cheshire, Altrincham was established as a market town in 1290, a time when the economy of most communities was based on agriculture rather than trade, and there is still a market in the town. Further socioeconomic development came with the extension of the Bridgewater Canal to Altrincham in 1765 and the arrival of the railway in 1849, stimulating industrial activity in the town. Outlying villages were absorbed by Altrincham's subsequent growth, along with the grounds of Dunham Massey Hall, formerly the home of the Earl of Stamford, and now a tourist attraction with three Grade I Listed Buildings and a deer park. Altrincham has good transport links to Manchester, Sale, Stretford, Warrington and Stockport among other destinations. The town has a strong middle-class presence: there has been a steady increase in Altrincham's middle classes since the 19th century. It is also home to Altrincham F.C. and three ice hockey clubs: Manchester Storm, Altrincham Aces and Trafford Tornados. ## History Local evidence of prehistoric human activity exists in the form of two Neolithic arrowheads found in Altrincham, and, further afield, a concentration of artefacts around Dunham. The remains of a Roman road, part of one of the major Roman roads in North West England connecting the legionary fortresses of Chester (Deva Victrix) and York (Eboracum), run through the Broadheath area. As it shows signs of having been repaired, the road was in use for a considerable period of time. The name Altrincham first appears as "Aldringeham", probably meaning "homestead of Aldhere's people". As recently as the 19th century it was spelt both Altrincham and Altringham. Until the Normans invaded England, the manors surrounding Altrincham were owned by the Saxon thegn Alweard; after the invasion they became the property of Hamon de Massey, though Altrincham is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The earliest documented reference to the town is from 1290, when it was granted its charter as a Free Borough by Baron Hamon de Massey V. The charter, which exists and is held by Trafford MBC, allowed a weekly market to be held, and it is possible that de Massey established the town to generate income through taxes on trade and tolls. This suggests that Altrincham may have been a planned market town, unusual during the Middle Ages, when most communities were agricultural. Altrincham was probably chosen as the site of the planned town rather than Dunham – which would have been protected by Dunham Castle – because its good access to roads was important for trade. Altrincham Fair became St James's Fair or Samjam in 1319 and continued until 1895. Fair days had their own court of Pye Powder (a corruption of the French for "dusty feet"), presided over by the mayor and held to settle disputes arising from the day's dealings. By 1348 the town had 120 burgage plots – ownership of land used as a measure of status and importance in an area – putting it on a par with the Cheshire town of Macclesfield and above Stockport and Knutsford. The earliest known residence in Altrincham was "the Knoll", on Stamford Street near the centre of the medieval town. A 1983 excavation on the demolished building, made by South Trafford Archaeological Group, discovered evidence that the house dated from the 13th or 14th century, and that it may have contained a drying kiln or malting floor. During the English Civil War, men from Altrincham fought for the Parliamentarian Sir George Booth. During the war, armies camped on nearby Bowdon Downs on several occasions. In 1754, a stretch of road south of Altrincham, along the Manchester to Chester route, was turnpiked. Turnpikes were toll roads which taxed passengers for the maintenance of the road. Further sections were turnpiked in 1765 from Timperley to Sale, and 1821 from Altrincham to Stockport. The maintenance of roads passed to local authorities in 1888, although by then most turnpike trusts had already declined. The connection of the Bridgewater Canal to Altrincham in 1765 stimulated the development of market gardening, and for many years Altrincham was noted for its vegetables. By 1767, warehouses had been built alongside the canal at Broadheath, the first step in the development of Broadheath as an industrial area and the beginning of Altrincham's industrialisation. The canal was connected in 1776 to the River Mersey, providing the town not only with a water route to Manchester, but also to the Irish Sea. Moves to connect the town to the UK's railway network gained pace in 1845, when the Act of Parliament for the construction of the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) was passed. The first train left Altrincham early on 20 July 1849, carrying 65 passengers. The MSJAR had two stations in the town: Altrincham, on Stockport Road, and Bowdon – though not actually in Bowdon – on Lloyd Street/Railway Street. Both were replaced in 1881 by Altrincham & Bowdon railway station on Stamford New Road. The London and North Western Railway's station at Broadheath, on the town's northern edge, was opened in 1854, while a further connection was created on 12 May 1862 by the Cheshire Midland Railway (later the Cheshire Lines Committee), who opened their line from Altrincham to Knutsford. With its new railway links, Altrincham and the surrounding areas became desirable places for the middle classes and commuters to live. Professionals and industrialists moved to the town, commuting into Manchester. While some travelled daily by coach, the less well–to–do commuted by express or "flyer" barges from Broadheath. Between 1851 and 1881 the population increased from 4,488 to 11,250. Broadheath's industrial area, covering about 250 acres (1.0 km²), was founded in 1885 by Harry Grey, 8th Earl of Stamford, to attract businesses. By 1900 Broadheath had its own docks, warehouses and electricity generating station. The site's proximity to rail, canal and road links proved attractive to companies making machine tools, cameras and grinding machines. The presence of companies like Tilghmans Sand Blast, and the Linotype and Machinery Company, established Broadheath as an industrial area of national standing. By 1914, 14 companies operated in Broadheath, employing thousands of workers. One of those was the Budenberg Gauge Company. Linotype also created 172 workers' homes near its factory, helping cater for the population boom created by Broadheath's industrialisation. Between 1891 and 1901 the population of Altrincham increased by 35 per cent, from 12,440 to 16,831. From the turn of the 20th century to the start of the Second World War, there were few changes in Altrincham. Although the town was witness to some of the Luftwaffe's raids on the Manchester area in the latter war, it emerged from the war relatively unscathed having lost only 23 civilian residents through enemy action, and as with the rest of Britain, experienced an economic boom. This manifested itself in the construction of new housing and the 1960s rebuilding of the town centre. However, during the 1970s employment at Broadheath declined by nearly 40 per cent. ## Governance Altrincham became a free borough and a self-governing township when it was granted its charter in June 1290 by the Lord of the Manor, Hamon de Massey V. The charter allowed for the creation of a merchants' guild, run by the town's burgesses to tax people passing through the borough. Burgesses were free men who lived in the town. The borough was ruled by a Court Leet and elected a mayor since at least 1452. Amongst the court's responsibilities were keeping the public peace and regulating the markets and fairs. The borough was not one of those reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, and continued to exist under the control of the Lord of the Manor and the Court Leet until its final abolition in 1886. The Public Health Act of 1848 led to the creation of Altrincham's Local Board of Health in 1851 to address the unsanitary conditions created by the town's growing population – the first such board in Trafford. The local board was reconstituted as an urban district council in the administrative county of Cheshire under the Local Government Act 1894. Altrincham Urban District was expanded in 1920 when parts of Carrington and Dunham Massey Civil Parishes were added. Altrincham Town Hall was designed by Charles Albert Hindle and completed in November 1901. A further expansion took place in 1936; Timperley Civil Parish was abolished and most of its area incorporated into Altrincham UD. At the same time, there was a minor exchange of areas with Hale Urban District; a minor addition from Bowdon Urban District; and a further substantial portion of Dunham Massey Civil Parish was added. In 1937 the urban district was granted a charter of incorporation and became a municipal borough. The new borough was granted armorial bearings which featured heraldic references to the Masseys and Earls of Stamford. With the passage of the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative counties and municipal boroughs were abolished and Altrincham became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester on 1 April 1974. Trafford Council is responsible for the administration of local services, such as education, social services, town planning, waste collection and council housing. The area is divided into seven electoral wards: Altrincham, Bowdon, Broadheath, Hale Barns, Hale Central, Timperley, and Village. These wards have 21 out of the 63 seats on the Trafford Council; as of the 2014 local elections fifteen of these seats were held by the Conservative Party, three by the Labour Party, and three by the Liberal Democrats. Altrincham was in the eponymous parliamentary constituency which was created in 1885. This lasted until 1945 when it was replaced by Altrincham and Sale. In 1997, this in turn became part of the newly created constituency of Altrincham and Sale West. Since its formation, Altrincham and Sale West has been represented in the House of Commons by the Conservative MP, Graham Brady. This is one of only four Conservative seats in Greater Manchester. ## Geography At (53.3838, −2.3547), Altrincham is on the southwestern edge of the Greater Manchester Urban Area, immediately south of the town of Sale, and 8 miles (13 km) southwest of Manchester city centre. It lies in the northwest corner of the Cheshire Plain, just south of the River Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal passes through the Broadheath area of the town. Altrincham's drinking water is supplied by United Utilities. The local bedrock consists mainly of Keuper Waterstone, a type of sandstone, and water retrieved from those rocks is very hard and often saline, making it undrinkable. The town's climate is generally temperate, with few extremes of temperature or weather. The mean temperature is slightly above average for the United Kingdom; whereas both annual rainfall and average hours of sunshine are slightly below the average for the UK. Along with Sale, Stretford and Urmston, Altrincham is one of the four major urban areas in Trafford. The Altrincham area, as defined by Trafford Council, comprises the south of Trafford. In addition to the town of Altrincham, it includes the villages of Timperley, Bowdon, Hale and Hale Barns. The Broadheath area of the town was a light industrial centre until the 1970s and is now a retail park. The most densely populated part of the town is around the town centre, with the less populated areas and more green space further from the centre of town in villages such as Bowdon and Hale. The Oldfield Brow area lies on the outskirts of the town beside the Bridgewater Canal and close to Dunham Massey. ## Demography As of the 2011 UK census, the town of Altrincham had a total population of 52,419. Of its 41,530 residents aged 16 and over, 62.1 per cent were couples living together. The town's population density is 37.4 inhabitants per hectare, with the population consisting of 49.0% males and 51.0% females. Of those aged 16 and over, 15.2 per cent had no academic qualifications, similar to the 18.6 per cent in all of Trafford. At 8.4 percent, Altrincham has a low proportion of non-white people. Asians are the area's largest ethnic minority, at 4.9 per cent of the population. In 1931, 14.6 per cent of Altrincham's population was middle class, slightly higher than the figure for England and Wales, which was 14 per cent. By 1971 this gap had increased to 28.8 per cent compared to 24 per cent nationally, while the town's working class population had declined, from 30.3 per cent in 1931 (36 per cent in England and Wales) to 18.6 per cent (26 per cent nationwide). The remainder comprised clerical and skilled manual workers. This change in social structure was similar to that seen across the nation – although biased towards the middle classes – making Altrincham the middle-class town it is today. ### Population change According to the hearth tax returns from 1664, the township of Altrincham had a population of about 636, making it the largest of the local settlements; this had increased to 1,692 in 1801. In the first half of the 19th century, the town's population increased by 165 per cent, higher than 89 per cent across England and 98 per cent in the Trafford area. The growth of the settlement was a result of the Industrial Revolution, and although Altrincham was one of the fastest-growing townships in the Trafford area, but paled in comparison to new industrial areas such as Ashton-under-Lyne, Hyde, and Manchester. In the second half of the 19th century, Altrincham's population grew by 275 per cent, higher than the 235 per cent for Trafford and 69 per cent nationally in the same period. This was due to the late industrialisation of the area and the introduction of the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway in 1849. ## Economy Historically, Altrincham was a market town and the two main areas of employment were agriculture and market trade. Although the town went into decline in the 15th century, it recovered and the annual fairs lasted until the mid-19th century and the market still continues. During the Industrial Revolution, Altrincham grew as an industrial town, particularly the Broadheath area, which was developed into an industrial estate. In 1801 there were four cotton mills in Altrincham, although they had closed by the 1851 census. The decline of the textile industry in Altrincham mirrored the decline of the industry in the Trafford area as a result of a lack of investment and the development of more established industrial areas such as Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, and Oldham. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, heavier industries moved into Broadheath, providing local employment. The area steadily declined during the second half of the 20th century, with employment at Broadheath falling from 8,000 to 5,000 between 1960 and 1970. Despite the presence of retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer in the town, a new Asda superstore in Broadheath, and redevelopment schemes costing over £100 million, Altrincham's 15.5 per cent level of employment in retail is below the national average of 16.9 per cent. Altrincham, with its neighbours Bowdon and Hale, is said to constitute a "stockbroker belt", with well-appointed dwellings in an area of sylvan opulence. The historic market town developed as a residential area in the 19th century although it retains its retail heritage in the Old Market Place (a conservation area) and a new pedestrianised shopping centre. The retail districts of the town have more recently fallen victim to decline due to competition from the nearby Trafford Centre and a regenerated Manchester city centre. In 2006 Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council unveiled plans for a £1.5 million redevelopment for the town centre. The renovation will create 146,000 square feet (13,600 m²) of new retail space and 203,000 square feet (18,900 m²) of refurbished space, providing 349,000 square feet (32,400 m²) in total. Construction on Altair, a £100 million development on Oakfield Road, began in September 2019 after many years of delay. The scheme includes apartments, shops and eating places and will create a new public square linking it to the nearby Altrincham Interchange, which underwent a £19million refurbishment in 2015. A 2010 survey found that despite being in one of the country's most affluent areas, nearly a third of the shops in Altrincham were vacant; Trafford council attributed the high number (78) to the effects of the recession and plans to refurbish Stamford House, which left most of its shops unused. According to the 2011 UK census, the main industries of employment of residents in Altrincham were wholesale and retail trade (14.8%), human health and social work activities (13.0%), and professional, scientific and technical activities (11.6%). The census recorded the economic inactivity of residents aged 16–74 as 3.5 per cent looking after home or family, 2.8 per cent long-term sick or disabled, 4.1 per cent students, and 1.5 per cent economically inactive for other reasons. The 3.1 per cent unemployment rate of Altrincham was low compared with the national rate of 4.4 per cent. ## Culture ### Landmarks and attractions The Old Market Place is thought to stand on the site of the original town settlement. Now a registered conservation area it consists of a series of part timber-framed buildings echoing the wattle and daube constructions of the original houses and burgage plots. The cobblestone paving was replaced in 1896. The Buttermarket which stood in the area near the Old Market Place from the 17th century until the late 19th century was also the site for dispensing early local justice. A courtroom, stocks and whipping post saw public floggings take place there until the early 19th century. The whipping post and stocks were restored as a tourist attraction by local traders in the 1990s. However the Buttermarket area was also a site of religious importance, since prospective brides and grooms are thought to have declared their intentions here. In 1814 Thomas de Quincey described the Old Market Place in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater while travelling from Manchester to Chester. He noted how little the place had changed since his visit 14 years earlier at the age of three, and that "fruits, such as can be had in July, and flowers were scattered about in profusion: even the stalls of the butchers, from their brilliant cleanliness, appeared attractive: and bonny young women of Altrincham were all tripping about in caps and aprons coquettishly disposed" In 1974 Altrincham artist George Allen was approached by Trafford Council to paint a picture of The Old Market Place. This picture was used to produce postcards which were sold to promote Altrincham, and are still sold today to raise funds for a local charity. Another of Altrincham's attractions is the historic market, set up over 700 years ago when the town was first established. Of the 21 conservation areas in Trafford, ten are in Altrincham: The Downs, The Devisdale, Bowdon, Ashley Heath, Goose Green, Old Market Place, Sandiway, George Street, the Linotype Housing Estate and Stamford New Road. On the town's outskirts is the 18th-century Dunham Massey Hall, surrounded by its 250-acre (1 km²) deer park, both now owned by the National Trust. The hall is early Georgian in style, and along with its stables and carriage house, is a Grade I listed building. Royd House was built between 1914 and 1916, by local architect Edgar Wood, as his own residence. It has a flat concrete roof, a concave façade, and is faced in Portland red stone and Lancashire brick. It is regarded as one of the most advanced examples of early 20th-century domestic architecture, and is referenced in architectural digests. It has been a Grade I listed building since 1975, one of six such buildings in Trafford. The Grade II listed clock outside the main transport interchange was built in 1880. The 16-acre (6.5 ha) Stamford Park was designed by landscape gardener John Shaw. It opened to the public in 1880, as a sports park with areas for cricket and football. The land was donated by George Grey, the 7th Earl of Stamford, and is now owned and run by Trafford Council. The park is listed as Grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England, and has won a bronze award from the Greenspace award scheme. John Leigh Park, located in the area of Oldfield Brow, was the site of Oldfield Hall until 1917 when it fell into disrepair after being purchased by the Earl of Stamford. That year Mr John Leigh purchased the land from the widowed Countess of Stamford and gifted it to the local council to be used as a park for soldiers and workers. The park was named 'John Leigh Park' and opened on 22 July 1917. ### Events and venues Altrincham has its own music festival that takes place in August. The Goose Green Festival takes place over the August bank holiday weekend in the Goose Green area of Altrincham, and features a number of unsigned bands, local food and drink and entertainment for all the family. Founded in 2015, the two day festival attracts over 6000 visitors over the two days, and headline acts have included Prose, The Jade Assembly, The Rainband, Apollo Junction and Corella. Altrincham has two theatres, the Altrincham Garrick Playhouse and the Club Theatre (latterly known as the Altrincham Little Theatre). The Altrincham Garrick group was formed in 1913. The Garrick held the world stage premier of Psycho in 1982. In 1998, it received a grant of £675,000 from the National Lottery as part of a £900,000 redevelopment of the theatre, which was completed in 1999. The Club Theatre group began in 1896, as the St Margaret's Church Institute Amateur Dramatics Society. It provides a venue for the Trafford Youth Theatre production each year, and it runs the Hale One Act Festival, an annual week-long event started in 1972. The club has received awards from both the Greater Manchester Drama Federation and the Cheshire Theatre Guild. Altrincham also had Greater Manchester's only Michelin starred restaurant, the Juniper. ### Sport Altrincham F.C., nicknamed The Robins, was founded in 1903 and play home matches at Moss Lane. The club plays in the National League. In the 1970s and 1980s, Altrincham F.C. built a reputation for giant-killing acts against Football League teams in FA Cup matches. The club has knocked out Football League opposition on a record 16 occasions, including a 1986 victory against top-flight Birmingham City. Altrincham won the forerunner of the Football Conference in its first two seasons, but was denied election to the Football League on both occasions, falling a single vote short in 1980. Altrincham have since had mixed fortunes. Relegated to the Northern Premier League in 1997, the club has since earned 5 promotions and suffered 5 relegations, most recently gaining promotion to the National League in the 2019-20 season. The club's main rivals are Macclesfield Town and Northwich Victoria. Altrincham is one of the few towns in north-west England with an ice rink and has had an ice hockey team since 1961, when Altrincham Ice Rink was built in Broadheath. The Altrincham Aces (later renamed the Trafford Metros) played from 1961 until 2003, when Altrincham Ice Rink closed. The town then had a three-year period without a rink or ice hockey team, until construction of the 2,500 capacity Altrincham Ice Dome was completed. Manchester Phoenix, a club having a professional presence in the English Premier Ice Hockey League and an extensive junior development aspect, relocated to the Ice Dome during the 2006–07 season, having withdrawn from competition two years earlier due to the high cost of playing matches at Manchester's MEN Arena. In 2009, the Manchester Phoenix English National Ice Hockey League team was renamed Trafford Metros, bringing the old Altrincham team's name back into use. When not being used by Phoenix the Altrincham Ice Dome is open to the public for ice skating. Founded in 1897, Altrincham Kersal RUFC plays rugby union. They have played at level 6 since being relegated from North One in 2012. Following the withdrawal of a number of Lancashire clubs from the county's union, they have been level transferred to play in the North Lancashire and Cumbria League for 2018–19. The club has produced England and Sale Sharks players Mark Cueto and Chris Jones and continues to produce players for the Sale Jets. Altrincham and District Athletics Club was founded in 1961 and provides training facilities for track and field, road running, cross-country running and fell running. Seamons Cycling Club was formed in 1948 in the area of Altrincham known locally as Seamons Moss. ## Education As Altrincham was part of the Bowdon parish, children from the township may have gone to the 16th-century school established at Bowdon; before that point, the town had no formal education system. A salt merchant from Dunham Woodhouses founded a school at Oldfield House intended for 40 boys aged 8–11 from the surrounding area. Sunday schools were set up in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Altrincham's increasing population prompted the founding of more schools during the early 19th century and by 1856 the town had 9 schools, 1 college, and 23 teachers. The introduction of compulsory education during the second half of the 19th century increased the demand for schools, and by 1886 Altrincham had 12 church schools and 8 private schools. Responsibility for local education fell to Cheshire County Council in 1903. Loreto Convent, the County High School for Girls, and Altrincham County High School for Boys, were founded in 1909, 1910, and 1912 respectively. Although still open these schools have since changed their names to Altrincham Grammar School for Girls, Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, and Loreto Grammar School. Altrincham received evacuees during the Second World War, and it was in this period that St. Ambrose College was founded. Altrincham now has eighteen primary schools, one special school and eight secondary schools, including five grammar schools; the Trafford district maintains a selective education system assessed by entrance exams set by each school. Several of Altrincham's secondary schools have specialist status: Altrincham College (arts); Altrincham Grammar School for Boys (language); Altrincham Grammar School for Girls (language); Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College (maths and computing); Loreto Grammar School (science and maths); and St. Ambrose College (maths and computing). Altrincham College of Arts, Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, Altrincham Grammar School for Girls, Blessed Thomas Holford Catholic College, Loreto Grammar School and St. Ambrose College were all rated as outstanding in 2011–12 Ofsted reports. Brentwood Special School is a mixed school for 11- to 19-year-olds who have special needs or learning difficulties. Altrincham is home to one of the longest established, family-owned nursery schools in the UK, Oakfield Nursery School. Oakfield was voted 'UK Nursery of the Year' in 2014 and 'Best Individual Nursery' in 2008. ## Religion During the medieval and post-medieval periods the township of Altrincham was part of Bowdon parish. Low population density meant that the town did not have a church until the Anglican church established a chapel of ease in 1799. Nonconformists were also present in Altrincham; Methodists set up a chapel in 1790, and Baptists built one in the 1870s. Irish immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s also returned Roman Catholicism to the area, the first Roman Catholic church built in Altrincham being St Vincent's, in 1860. Several churches in Altrincham are deemed architecturally important enough to be designated Grade II listed buildings. These are Christ Church, the Church of St Alban, the Church of St George, the Church of St John the Evangelist and Trinity United Reformed Church. Of the nine Grade II\* listed buildings in Trafford, three are in Altrincham: the Church of St Margaret, the Church of St John the Divine and Hale Chapel in Hale Barns. As of the 2001 UK census, 78.8 per cent of Altrincham's residents reported themselves as being Christian, 1.1 per cent Jewish, 1.1 per cent Muslim, 0.4 per cent Hindu, 0.2 per cent Buddhist and 0.1 per cent Sikh. The census recorded 12.1 per cent as having no religion, 0.2 per cent with an alternative religion, while 6.1 per cent did not state a religion. Altrincham is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shrewsbury, and the Church of England Diocese of Chester. The nearest synagogue, belonging to Hale and District Hebrew Congregation, is on Shay Lane in Hale Barns. ## Transport Construction of the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway began in 1845. The line was opened in October 1849, with services from Manchester London Road via Sale to Altrincham. In 1931, it became one of Great Britain's first electrified railway lines, with a 1,500 V DC overhead line. At the same time, a new Altrincham station was opened on the same line, at Navigation Road, serving housing developments in the area. By 1937, 130 train services ran daily between Manchester and Altrincham. The line was renovated in the early 1990s to form part of the Manchester Metrolink light rail system. Broadheath railway station served the northern part of Altrincham between 1853 and 1962, on the line from Manchester, via Lymm, to Warrington. Altrincham Interchange is one of the Metrolink's termini. The interchange was refurbished (2015–16) and now includes a brand new footbridge, with three lifts to cope with increased passenger demands, a larger-scale ticket office and a modern bus interchange. The Interchange connects the town to several locations in Greater Manchester, such as Sale and Bury; the service also includes Navigation Road station. Metrolink services leave around every six minutes, between 07:15 and 19:30 on weekdays and less frequently at other times. National Rail services link the Altrincham and Navigation Road stations with Chester (via Northwich) and with Manchester (via Stockport). Altrincham Interchange, next to the railway station, is a hub for local bus routes. Manchester Airport, the largest in the UK outside London, is 5 miles (8 km) to the south-east of the town and is connected via the Manchester Piccadilly–Crewe line. There are plans to create a new link between Manchester Airport and the Mid-Cheshire Line, which Altrincham Interchange is a station on. Recently the Metrolink completed connections to this airport and opened the line 12 months early, but this is not a direct connection from the Metrolink line at Altrincham Interchange. ## Notable people The artist Helen Allingham, born in 1848, lived in Altrincham and then Bowdon during her childhood years. Abstract artist Jeremy Moon was born in Altrincham in 1934. The composer and music teacher John Ireland was born in Bowdon in 1879. Alison Uttley wrote the Little Grey Rabbit books while living in Bowdon. Dramatist Ronald Gow lived there in his youth and later taught at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys. The town was also the birthplace of the film and television actress Angela Cartwright. Ian Brown and John Squire of the Stone Roses both attended Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, and Paul Young of Sad Café and Mike and the Mechanics lived in Altrincham until his death in 2000. Nick Estcourt, mountain climber, opened a climbing shop on Stamford New Road in Altrincham shortly before being swept to his death by an avalanche during an expedition to climb K2 in 1978 (the shop was subsequently run for many years by his wife, Carolyn). Estcourt was one of the closest friends of Chris Bonington, who lived for a time in Bowdon. Hewlett Johnson, later known as the "Red Dean" of Canterbury, was curate, and later vicar of St Margaret's in the town from 1904 to 1924. Footballer Jack Liggins was born here in 1906. The Lancashire and England Test cricketer Paul Allott was born in Altrincham. Two Victoria Cross recipients were born at Altrincham. Edward Kinder Bradbury was born (16 August 1881) in the town, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry and ability in organising the defence of 'L' Battery against heavy odds at Nery on 1 September 1914 in World War I. Altrincham born Bill Speakman received the Victoria Cross for valour in 1951 in the Korean War. Sir Michael Pollock, an officer in the Royal Navy who rose to the position of First Sea Lord, was born in Altrincham. ## See also - Listed buildings in Altrincham

Anbar campaign (2003–2011)

Large-scale fighting between Coalition forces and Sunni insurgents during the Iraq War

The Anbar campaign consisted of fighting between the United States military, together with Iraqi security forces, and Sunni insurgents in the western Iraqi governorate of Al Anbar. The Iraq War lasted from 2003 to 2011, but the majority of the fighting and counterinsurgency campaign in Anbar took place between April 2004 and September 2007. Although the fighting initially featured heavy urban warfare primarily between insurgents and U.S. Marines, insurgents in later years focused on ambushing the American and Iraqi security forces with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), large scale attacks on combat outposts, and car bombings. Almost 9,000 Iraqis and 1,335 Americans were killed in the campaign, many in the Euphrates River Valley and the Sunni Triangle around the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. Al Anbar, the only Sunni-dominated province in Iraq, saw little fighting in the initial invasion. Following the fall of Baghdad it was occupied by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division. Violence began on 28 April 2003 when 17 Iraqis were killed in Fallujah by U.S. soldiers during an anti-American demonstration. In early 2004 the U.S. Army relinquished command of the governorate to the Marines. By April 2004 the governorate was in full-scale revolt. Savage fighting occurred in both Fallujah and Ramadi by the end of 2004, including the Second Battle of Fallujah. Violence escalated throughout 2005 and 2006 as the two sides struggled to secure the Western Euphrates River Valley. During this time, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) became the governorate's main Sunni insurgent group and turned the provincial capital of Ramadi into its stronghold. The Marine Corps issued an intelligence report in late 2006 declaring that the governorate would be lost without a significant additional commitment of troops. In August 2006, several tribes located in Ramadi and led by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha began to form what would eventually become the Anbar Awakening, which later led to the tribes revolting against AQI. The Anbar Awakening helped turn the tide against the insurgents through 2007. American and Iraqi tribal forces regained control of Ramadi in early 2007, as well as other cities such as Hīt, Haditha, and Rutbah. More hard fighting still followed throughout the Summer of 2007 however, particularly in the rural western River Valley, due largely to its proximity to the Syrian border and the vast network of natural entry points for foreign fighters to enter Iraq, via Syria. In June 2007 the U.S. turned a majority of its attention to eastern Anbar Governorate and secured the cities of Fallujah and Al-Karmah. The fighting was mostly over by September 2007, although US forces maintained a stabilizing and advisory role through December 2011. Celebrating the victory, President George W. Bush flew to Anbar in September 2007 to congratulate Sheikh Sattar and other leading tribal figures. AQI assassinated Sattar days later. In September 2008, political control was transferred to Iraq. Military control was transferred in June 2009, following the withdrawal of American combat forces from the cities. The Marines were replaced by the US Army in January 2010. The Army withdrew its combat units by August 2010, leaving only advisory and support units. The last American forces left the governorate on 7 December 2011. ## Background Al Anbar is Iraq's largest and westernmost governorate. It comprises 32 percent of the country's total land mass, nearly 53,208 square miles (137,810 km²), almost exactly the size of North Carolina in the United States and slightly larger than Greece. Geographically, it is isolated from most of Iraq, but is easy to access from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. The Euphrates River, Lake Habbaniyah, and the artificially created Lake Qadisiyah are its most significant geographical features. Outside of the Euphrates area the terrain is overwhelmingly desert, comprising the eastern part of the Syrian Desert. Temperatures range from highs of 115 °F (46 °C) in July and August to below 50 °F (10 °C) from November to March. The governorate lacks significant natural resources and many inhabitants benefited from the Ba'athist government's patronage system, funded by oil revenues from elsewhere in the country. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) estimated that about 1.2 million Iraqis lived in Anbar in 2003, more than two-thirds of them in Fallujah and Ramadi. With a population 95 percent Sunni, many from the Dulaimi Tribe, Anbar is Iraq's only governorate without a significant Shia or Kurdish population. 95 percent of the population lives within 5 miles (8.0 km) of the Euphrates. At the time of the invasion, Fallujah was known as a religious enclave hostile towards outsiders, while Ramadi, the provincial capital, was more secular. Outside the cities, the ancient tribal system run by Sheikhs held considerable influence. Conditions in Anbar particularly favored an insurgency. The province was overwhelmingly Sunni, the minority religious group that lost its power and influence in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Hussein was also very popular in the province more than anywhere else in the country. Many did not fight during the invasion (allowing them to claim that they had not been defeated) and "still wanted to slug it out", according to journalist Tom Ricks. Military service was compulsory in Saddam's Iraq and the Amiriyah area contained a sizeable portion of Iraq's arms industry. Immediately after Saddam fell, insurgents and others looted many of the 96 known munitions sites, as well as local armories and weapons stockpiles. These weapons were used to arm the insurgents in Anbar and elsewhere. While only a small minority of Sunnis were initially insurgents, many either supported or tolerated them. Sympathetic Ba'athists and former Saddam officials in Syrian exile provided money, sanctuary, and foreign fighters to insurgent groups. Future al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi spent part of 2002 in central Iraq, including Anbar Governorate, preparing for resistance. Within several months of the invasion, the governorate had become a sanctuary for anti-occupation fighters. ## 2003 ### Invasion Anbar experienced relatively little fighting during the initial invasion of Iraq, as the main US offensive was directed through the Shia areas of southeastern Iraq, from Kuwait to Baghdad. An infantry division had been earmarked in 2002 to secure Anbar during the invasion. However, the Pentagon decided to treat the province with an "economy of force" in early 2003. The first Coalition forces to enter Al Anbar were American and Australian special forces, who seized vital targets such as Al Asad Airbase and Haditha Dam and prevented the launch of Scud missiles at Israel. While there was generally little combat, the most significant engagement occurred when elements of the American 3rd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment seized Haditha Dam on 31 March 2003. Surrounded by a larger Iraqi force, the Rangers held the dam until relieved after eight days. During the siege, they destroyed twenty-nine Iraqi tanks and killed an estimated 300 to 400 Iraqi soldiers. Three Rangers were awarded the Silver Star for the action. In addition, four other Rangers were killed when their checkpoint near Haditha was attacked by a suicide bomber. At the end of the invasion, the pro-Saddam forces in Anbar–the Ba'ath Party, the Republican Guard, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the Iraqi Intelligence Service—remained intact. Saddam hid in Ramadi and Hīt in early April. Other pro-Saddam forces were able to relocate from Anbar to Syria with money and weapons, where they set up headquarters. The nucleus of the insurgency in its first few months was formed from the pro-Saddam forces in Anbar and Syria. In contrast to the looting throughout Baghdad and other parts of the country, Ba'athist headquarters and homes of high-ranking Sunni leaders were relatively untouched. The head of Iraqi ground forces in the province, General Mohammed Jarawi, formally surrendered to elements of the 3rd Infantry Division at Ramadi on 15 April 2003. ### Insurgency begins Shortly after the Fall of Baghdad, the US Army turned Anbar Governorate over to a single regiment, the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR). With only several thousand soldiers, that force had little hope of effectively controlling Anbar. The immediate catalyst for violent activity in the Fallujah area came after what many Iraqis and foreign journalists dubbed a "massacre" in Fallujah. On the evening of 28 April 2003, Saddam Hussein's birthday, a crowd of about one hundred men, women, and children staged anti-American protests outside a US military outpost in Fallujah. The Iraqis claimed they were unarmed, while the Army said that some individuals were carrying and firing AK-47s. The 82nd Airborne soldiers manning the schoolhouse outpost fired on the crowd, killing at least twelve and wounding dozens more. The Army never apologized for the killings or paid compensation. In the weeks afterwards, the town's pro-US mayor urged the Americans to leave. On 16 May 2003, the CPA issued Order Number 1, which abolished the Ba'ath Party and began a process of "de-Ba'athification", and on 23 May 2003 issued Order Number 2, which disbanded the Iraqi Army and other security services. Both orders further antagonized the Sunnis of Anbar. Many Sunnis took great pride in the Iraqi Army and viewed its disbanding as an act of contempt towards the Iraqi people. The dissolution also put hundreds of thousands of Anbaris out of work as many were members of the Army or the party. Three days after CPA Order No. 2, Major Matthew Schram became the first American killed since the invasion in Anbar Governorate when his convoy came under rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack on 26 May near Haditha. ### June–October 2003 > What we have done over the last six months in Al Anbar has been a recipe for instability. Following the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, insurgent activity increased, especially in Fallujah. Initially, armed resistance groups could be characterized as either Sunni nationalists who wanted to bring back the Ba'ath Party with Saddam Hussein, or anti-Saddam fighters. The first major leader of the insurgency in Anbar was Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Ba'ath party regional chairman for the Karbala Governorate, who was originally No. 54 on the US list of most-wanted Iraqis. According to the US military, Khamis received his funding and orders directly from Saddam, then still a fugitive. In June, American forces conducted Operation Desert Scorpion, a mostly unsuccessful attempt to root out the burgeoning insurgency. An isolated success occurred near Rawah, where American soldiers cornered and killed more than 70 fighters on 12 June and captured a large weapons cache. In general, American forces had difficulty distinguishing between Iraqi civilians and insurgents, and the civilian casualties incurred during the sweep increased support for the insurgency. On 5 July, a bomb killed seven at a graduation ceremony for the first American-trained police cadets in Ramadi. On 16 July, Mohammed Nayil Jurayfi, the pro-government mayor of Haditha, and his youngest son were assassinated. As the violence escalated, the US responded with what many Iraqis called the "senseless use of firepower" and "midnight raids on innocent men". Human Rights Watch accused the Army of a pattern of "over-aggressive tactics, indiscriminate shooting in residential areas and a quick reliance on lethal force", as well as using "disproportionate force". For example, if Iraqi insurgents set off a land mine, the US would respond by dropping bombs on those houses with arms caches; when insurgents fired a mortar round at American positions near Fallujah, the Americans responded with heavy artillery. American forces near Al Qaim conducted "hard knocks" on local residents, kicking in doors and manhandling individuals, only to discover they were innocent. In an incident on 11 September, soldiers manning a checkpoint near Fallujah shot multiple rounds at both an Iraqi police truck and a nearby hospital, killing seven. Soldiers also beat and abused Iraqi detainees. There was a constant rotation of units through the governorate, which led to confusion among the American troops: Fallujah had five different battalions rotate through in five months. Summing up the initial American approach to Al Anbar, Keith Mines, the CPA diplomat in Anbar Governorate, wrote: > What we have done over the last six months in Al Anbar has been a recipe for instability. Through aggressive de-Ba'athification, the demobilization of the army, and the closing of factories the coalition has left tens of thousands of individuals outside the political and economic life of this country. On 31 October, during Operation Abalone teams from A Squadron of the British SAS supported by Delta force assaulted insurgent held compounds/dwellings in the fringes of Ramadi, killing an estimated dozen insurgents and capturing four. The operation turned up evidence of foreign fighters, finding actual proof of an internationalist jihadist movement. One SAS operator was killed in the operation. The SAS also operated covertly in Ramadi and Fallujah in October and November 2003 and other more remote parts of Al Anbar Governorate as part of Operation Paradoxical which was aimed at hunting down threats to the coalition. ### November–December 2003 During the insurgency's Ramadan Offensive, a military Chinook transport helicopter carrying 32 soldiers was shot down with an SA-7 missile near Fallujah on 2 November. Thirteen were killed and the rest wounded. Following the shootdown, Fallujah was quiet for a few months. On 5 November, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Marines would return to Iraq early the next year and would take over Al Anbar Governorate. As the Marines prepared to move in, there was a growing consensus that the 82nd had lost control of the area, although the only real problem was Fallujah. Some Marine commanders, like Major General James Mattis and Lieutenant Colonel Carl Mundy, criticized the Army's tactics as "hard-nosed" and "humiliating the Sunni population", promising that the Marines would act differently. Late that November, Operators from A Squadron SAS launched a heliborne assault on a remote farm in Al Anbar Governorate, after they came under fire from insurgents inside, air support was called in and hit the farm, after it was cleared; seven dead insurgents were found whom American intelligence believed were foreign fighters. Riots in Fallujah and Ramadi followed the December capture of Saddam Hussein. The capture of Saddam created significant problems in Anbar: instead of weakening the insurgency, many Anbaris were outraged over what they saw as the degrading treatment of Saddam. Saddam's removal allowed the insurgency to recruit fighters who had previously opposed the Americans but had remained passive out of hatred for Saddam. As Saddam loyalists were killed or captured, leadership positions went to AQI-affiliated hardliners such as Abdullah Abu Azzam al-Iraqi, who was directly responsible for murdering government officials in 2004. While the Ba'ath Party continued to play a major role in the insurgency, the balance of power had shifted to various religious leaders who were advocating a jihad against American forces. ## 2004 ### January–March 2004 At the beginning of 2004, General Ricardo Sanchez, head of Multinational Force Iraq (MNF–I), claimed that the US had "made significant progress in Anbar Province." However, CPA funds for the governorate were inadequate. A brigade commander in Fallujah was allocated only \$200,000 a month, when he estimated that it would cost at least \$25 million to restart the city's factories, which employed tens of thousands of workers. By February, insurgent attacks were rapidly increasing. On 12 February, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General John P. Abizaid and Major General Chuck Swannack, the 82nd Airborne's commanding officer, were attacked while driving through Fallujah. On 14 February, in an incident dubbed the "Valentine's Day Massacre", insurgents overran a police station in downtown Fallujah, killing 23 to 25 policemen and freeing 75 prisoners. The next day, the Americans fired Fallujah's police chief for refusing to wear his uniform and arrested the mayor. In March, Keith Mines wrote, "there is not a single properly trained and equipped Iraqi security officer in the entire Al Anbar province." He added that security was entirely dependent on American soldiers, yet those same soldiers inflamed Sunni nationalists. That same month General Swannack gave a briefing on Anbar where he talked about improved security, declared the insurgency there was all but finished, and concluded "the future for Al Anbar in Iraq remains very bright." The 82nd Airborne handed control of Al Anbar Governorate over to the I Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), also known as Multi-National Forces West (MNF-W), on 24 March. Nearly two-thirds of the Marines, including their commanders James T. Conway and James Mattis, had participated in the invasion in 2003. Conway planned on gradually reestablishing control over Anbar using a methodical counterinsurgency program, showing respect for the population and training the Iraqi Army and police using military transition teams (based on the Combined Action Program used by the Marines during the Vietnam War). During the transition of authority between the MEF and the 82nd Airborne it became obvious that western Iraq was going to be more problematic for the Marines than southern Iraq had been. On 15 March, 3rd Battalion 7th Marines operating near Al Qaim got into a firefight with Syrian border guards. On 24 March, several Marines and paratroopers were wounded in Fallujah when insurgents attacked the ceremony for transfer of authority. Just one week after the MEF had taken over Anbar, insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy carrying four American mercenaries from Blackwater USA on 31 March, killing all of them. An angry mob then set the mercenaries' bodies ablaze and dragged their corpses through the streets before hanging them over a bridge crossing the Euphrates. The American media compared the attack on the mercenaries to the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, where images of American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Somalia prompted the United States to withdraw its troops. That same day five soldiers were killed in nearby Habbaniyah when their M113 armored personnel carrier was hit by a mine. According to General Conway, it was the largest mine that had been used in Anbar to date; only a tailgate and a boot were recovered. ### First Battle of Fallujah > Al Jazeera kicked our ass. In response to the killings, General Sanchez ordered the Marines to attack Fallujah, under direct orders from President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. General Conway and his staff initially urged caution, pointing out that the MEF had already developed a more nuanced long-term plan to reestablish control over Fallujah and that using overwhelming force would most likely further destabilize the city. They noted that the insurgents were specifically trying to "bait us into overreaction." Despite these objections, General Sanchez wanted a sustained Marine presence in the city within 72 hours. The Marines began their attack, codenamed Operation Vigilant Resolve, on 5 April. The overall ground commander in Anbar, 1st Marine Division commander General James Mattis, initially planned to use his only available units, 1st Battalion 5th Marines and 2nd Battalion 1st Marines. They would push in from the east and west and methodically contain the insurgents. This plan was underway when on 9 April, General Sanchez ordered an immediate halt. The main reason behind this order was the coverage by the Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya television networks. The two networks had the only access to the city. They repeatedly reported that Marines were using excessive force and collective punishment, and their footage of dead babies in hospitals inflamed both Iraqi and world opinion. General Conway later summed up their effect on the battle by saying, "Al Jazeera kicked our ass." When the 2nd Iraqi Battalion was ordered to Fallujah, 30 percent of its soldiers refused or deserted, and within days over 80 percent of the police force and Iraqi National Guard in Anbar Governorate had deserted. After two members of the Iraqi Governing Council resigned over the attack and five more threatened to do so, CPA Leader Paul Bremer and CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid were worried that Fallujah might bring down the Iraqi government and ordered a unilateral ceasefire. Following the ceasefire, the Marines held their positions and brought in additional units, waiting for what they assumed would be the resumption of their attack. General Mattis launched Operation Ripper Sweep while the Marines waited, pushing the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (LAR) and 2nd Battalion 7th Marines into the farmlands around Fallujah and neutralizing many armed gangs operating along the local highways. The 3rd Battalion 4th Marines also conducted a raid into nearby insurgent-held Karmah, which expanded into a major engagement lasting the rest of the month. The Marines were able to keep their supply lines open, but withdrew for political reasons. President Bush refused to allow the resumption of the attack, but was also unhappy with the status quo, asking his commanders for "other options". Finally, General Conway proposed what was a workable compromise in his opinion: the Fallujah Brigade. Led by former Iraqi Sunni elites, such as Jasim Mohammed Habib Saleh and Muhammed Latif, and made up largely of insurgents who had been fighting the Marines, the brigade was supposed to maintain order in the city while allowing the US to withdraw and save face. On 10 May, General Mattis formally turned the city over and withdrew the following day. The First Battle for Fallujah had resulted in 51 US servicemen killed and 476 wounded. Iraqi losses were much higher. The Marines estimated that about 800 Iraqis were killed. Reports differed on how many were civilians: the Marines counted 300, whereas the independent organization Iraq Body Count argued that 600 civilians had been killed. Four Marines and soldiers were awarded either the Navy Cross or Distinguished Service Cross for the battle. Another Marine, Captain Douglas A. Zembiec of Echo Company 2nd Battalion 1st Marines, became known as the "Lion of Fallujah" for his actions during the assault. ### Ramadi and western Anbar in 2004 Outside of Fallujah, there were additional attacks on American positions in Anbar throughout the spring and summer of 2004. They were part of a larger "jihad wave" that swept across the governorate in mid-April. Gangs of armed youths took to the streets, setting up impromptu roadblocks and threatening supply routes in eastern Anbar and around Baghdad. At one point General Mattis feared a general uprising by the Sunni community, similar to the 1978 Tehran protests. On 6 April, a force of 300 insurgents attacked Marine patrols throughout Ramadi in an attempt to relieve pressure on Fallujah. Sixteen US Marines and an estimated 250 insurgents were killed in heavy street fighting over four days. Nearly all members of a squad from 2nd Battalion 4th Marines were killed when they drove into an ambush in unarmored Humvees, the first time the Marines had lost a firefight in Iraq. On 17 April, insurgents attacked a Marine patrol in the border city of Husaybah, leading to a series of engagements that lasted the whole day and resulted in five Marines and at least 120 insurgents killed. Around the same time, on 14 April, a squad led by Corporal Jason Dunham was operating near Husaybah when one member of a group of Iraqis who were being searched by Dunham's squad threw a grenade at the squad. Dunham immediately threw himself on the grenade, receiving a mortal wound from the blast but saving his fellow squad members. He later became the first Marine since the Vietnam War to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Attempting to emulate the perceived success in Fallujah, US commanders in Ramadi responded to the 28 June transfer of sovereignty from the CPA to the Iraqi Interim Government by pulling most forces back to camps outside the city and focusing on securing a highway that ran through its center. Fighting continued to escalate throughout Anbar Governorate. On 21 June, a four-man Scout Sniper team operating with 2nd Battalion 4th Marines in Ramadi was executed by a group of insurgents who had infiltrated their observation post. In mid-July, General Mattis predicted that Anbar would "[go] to hell" if the Marines could not hold Ramadi. On 5 August, Anbar Provincial Governor Abd al-Karim Barjas resigned following the kidnapping of his two sons by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Barjas appeared on television and publicly apologized for "cooperation with the infidel". He was replaced by an interim governor until January 2005. The head of the Ramadi police force was subsequently arrested for complicity with the kidnappings. That same month, an Iraqi battalion commander was captured by insurgents in Fallujah and beaten to death. After his death, two Iraqi National Guard battalions near Fallujah promptly deserted, leaving their weapons and equipment to the insurgents. Counterinsurgency expert John Nagl, serving in nearby Khaldiyah, said that his unit knew the local police chief was supporting the insurgency, "but assessed that he had to do so to stay alive." Suicide bombers killed seven Marines from 2nd Battalion 1st Marines on 6 September, eleven Iraqi police near Baghdadi on 23 October, and eight Marines from the newly arrived 1st Battalion 3rd Marines one week later. More than 100 Americans were killed in Anbar from May 2004 to October 2004. Prior to November, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi invited representatives from Ramadi and Fallujah in an attempt to negotiate an end to the fighting, similar to his previous dealings with Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. In September, with the blessings of the Americans, Allawi disbanded the discredited Fallujah Brigade and privately gave the Marines permission to begin planning an offensive to retake Fallujah. In early October, Allawi stepped up his efforts, demanding that the representatives of Fallujah hand over Zarqawi or face a renewed assault. They refused. Shortly before the Marine offensive began, Sheikh Harith al-Dhari, leader of the pro-insurgent Association of Muslim Scholars, said that "the Iraqi people view Fallujah as the symbol of their steadfastness, resistance and pride." ### Insurgency in 2004 Despite the return of sovereignty to the Iraqi Interim Government on 28 June, the insurgency was still viewed by many Iraqis as legitimate and the Iraqi government as agents of the United States. In late 2004, DIA officer Derek Harvey said that insurgents in Ramadi were receiving financing via Syria "to the tune of \$1.2 million a month". This was disputed by a CIA officer, explaining that they "didn't see clear financing coming from Syria". The insurgency continued to enjoy broad-based support throughout Iraqi society, showing few of the sectarian divisions which would become pronounced following the 2006 al-Askari Mosque bombing. Shia Iraqis attacked Iraqi military units moving towards Fallujah, Shia leaders called on their supporters to donate blood for insurgents, and Muqtada al-Sadr referred to the insurgents in Fallujah as "holy warriors". Some Shi'ia attempted to join the fighting. The first in a series of execution videos was released on 11 May by AQI, of its leader al-Zarqawi executing American citizen Nick Berg. Many of these hostages, such as Kim Sun-il, Eugene Armstrong, Jack Hensley, and Kenneth Bigley, were taken to Zarqawi's base in Fallujah for execution. After the initial push into Fallujah, the US argued that Zarqawi was behind a series of car bombings throughout Iraq. There had been no large car bombings in Baghdad during the siege, and enough munitions and contraband had been uncovered to conclude that many "bombs and car bombs detonated elsewhere in Iraq may have been manufactured in Fallujah." In contrast, there were 30 large car bombs in the two months following the creation of the Fallujah Brigade, and the Brigade was now seen by the US and Iraqi governments as a front for the insurgency. The suicide bombings and the hostage videos made Zarqawi the public face of the Iraqi insurgency in 2004, even though his leadership was disputed by many Sunni nationalist commanders. By late 2004 the US government's bounty on his head matched Osama bin Laden's. However, a senior US military intelligence official described the core of the insurgency in December 2004 as "the old Sunni oligarchy using religious nationalism as a motivating force." ### Second Battle of Fallujah > Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered." The order by Allawi to attack Fallujah again came on 6 November, just four days after George W. Bush was reelected as president. 1st Marine Division commander General Richard F. Natonski assembled an ad hoc force of six Marine battalions, three Army battalions, three Iraqi battalions, and the British Black Watch Regiment. The insurgents, loosely led by Zarqawi, Abdullah al-Janabi, and Zarqawi's lieutenant Hadid, had replaced their losses and reportedly now had between 3,000 and 4,000 men in the city. They planned to hinder the Marine advance with roadblocks, berms, and mines, while conducting attacks outside the city to tie down Marine units. The attack began on 7 November when General Natonski had the 3rd LAR and 36th Iraqi battalions seize the city's hospital, located on a peninsula just west of the city. The main attack began the night of 8 November. Coalition forces attacked from the north, achieving complete tactical surprise. The insurgents responded by attacking the Marines in small groups, often armed with RPGs. According to General Natonski, many insurgents had seen pictures of the Abu Ghraib scandal and were determined not to be taken alive. By 20 November, Marines had reached the southern boundary of the city, but pockets of insurgents still remained. The assault battalions divided the city into areas and crisscrossed their assigned areas in an attempt to find the insurgents. Four days later Zarqawi released an audiotape condemning Sunni Muslim clerics for their lack of support, claiming "hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered." The fighting slowly ebbed and by 16 December the US had begun to reopen the city and allow residents to return. The battle was later described by the US military as "the heaviest urban combat Marines have been involved in since the battle of Hue City in Vietnam." The official Marine Corps history recorded that 78 Marines, sailors, and soldiers died and another 651 were wounded retaking Fallujah (394 were able to return to duty). One-third of the dead and wounded came from a single battalion, 3rd Battalion 1st Marines. Eight Marines were awarded the Navy Cross, the US military's second-highest award for valor, three of them posthumously. Sergeant Rafael Peralta was also unsuccessfully nominated for the Medal of Honor. Officials estimated they had killed between 1,000 and 1,600 insurgents and detained another 1,000 out of an estimated 1,500 to 3,000 insurgents who were believed to be in the city. Aircraft dropped 318 precision bombs, launched 391 rockets and missiles, and fired 93,000 machine gun or cannon rounds on the city, while artillery units fired 5,685 rounds of 155 mm shells. The Red Cross estimated that 250,000 out of 300,000 residents had left the city during the fighting. A Baghdad Red Cross official unofficially estimated that up to 800 civilians were killed. > The Battle of Fallujah was not a defeat—but we cannot afford many more victories like it. The Second Battle of Fallujah was unique in the Anbar campaign, in that it was the only time the US military and the insurgents waged a division-level conventional engagement. During the rest of the Anbar campaign, the insurgents never stood and fought in numbers that large. The official Marine Corps history claimed that the battle was not decisive, because most of the insurgent leadership and non-local insurgents had fled beforehand. Summing up the Marine Corps view, the United States Naval Institute's official magazine Proceedings said, "The Battle of Fallujah was not a defeat—but we cannot afford many more victories like it." ## 2005 ### January–April 2005 Following the Second Battle of Fallujah, the Marines faced three main tasks: providing humanitarian assistance to the hundreds of thousands of refugees returning to the city, retaking the numerous towns and cities they had abandoned along the Euphrates in the run-up to the battle, and providing security for the Iraqi parliamentary elections scheduled for 30 January. According to top Marine officials, the elections were designed to help enfranchise the Iraqi government by including Iraqi citizens in its formation. Only 3,775 voters (2 percent of the eligible population) cast ballots in Anbar Province due to a Sunni boycott. The simultaneous elections for the provincial council were won by the Iraqi Islamic Party, which suffered from a perceived lack of legitimacy but nevertheless would dominate the Anbar legislature until 2009. During the run-up to the elections, a CH-53E helicopter crashed near Al-Rutbah on 26 January, killing all 31 Marines and sailors, most of whom were members of 1st Battalion 3rd Marines and who had survived the Second Battle of Fallujah. This was the single deadliest incident for US troops in the Iraq War. On 20 February, the Marines launched Operation River Blitz, their first major offensive of the year, centered in the western Euphrates River Valley against the cities of Ramadi, Hīt, and Baghdadi. Different units adopted different strategies. In Fallujah, the Marines surrounded the city with berms, banned all vehicles, and required residents to carry identification cards. In Ramadi, the 2nd BCT of the 28th Infantry Division focused on controlling the main roads and protecting the governor and government center. In western Anbar, the 2nd Marine Regiment conducted search and destroy missions, described as "cordon and search", where they repeatedly pushed into enemy-controlled towns and then withdrew. On 2 April, a group of up to 60 AQI fighters launched a major attack, described as "one of the most sophisticated" seen to date, on the Abu Ghraib prison. The insurgents used a barrage of mortars, coupled with a suicide car bomb, in an unsuccessful attempt to breach the prison, wounding 44 US troops and 13 detainees. ### Improvised Explosive Devices By late February, a new threat emerged—the improvised explosive device (IED). In 2005, 158 Marines and soldiers were killed by IEDs or suicide bombers, more than half (58 percent) of that year's combat deaths in Anbar. These numbers reflected a nationwide trend. While IEDs had been used since the beginning of the insurgency, the early models had been crudely designed, using "dynamite or gunpowder mixed with nails and buried beside a road". By mid-2005 the insurgents had refined their technique, triggering them by remote control, stringing artillery shells or missiles together, using solid foundations to magnify the explosion, and burying them under roadways to inflict maximum damage. The US responded with a series of progressively more-sophisticated electronic jamming devices and other electronic warfare programs which eventually consolidated into the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization. > Unless there are people melting inside of Humvees, then it's not a real problem. On 17 February, Brigadier General Dennis Hejlik filed an urgent request with the Marine Corps for 1,200 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, specifically designed to withstand IED attacks, for use in Al Anbar Governorate. In his request, General Hejlik added, "The [Marines] cannot continue to lose ... serious and grave casualties to IED[s]." The Marine Corps did not formally act on the request for 21 months. Hejlik later claimed that he was referring to IEDs which "tore into the sides of vehicles", and that the Marine Corps had determined that simply adding more armored Humvees would provide adequate protection. Whistleblower Franz Gayl disagreed, and wrote a report for Congress claiming that the request was shelved because the Marine Corps wanted to use the funds to develop the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, a replacement for the Humvee not scheduled to become operational until 2012. Some Army personnel complained that the Marines took an almost casual attitude towards IEDs. One Army officer in Ramadi complained that, after warning about the large number of IEDs on a particular route, he was told, "Unless there are people melting inside of Humvees, then it's not a real problem." ### Western Euphrates River Valley By the spring of 2005, both the US and Iraqi governments concluded that the biggest problem facing Iraq was AQI's car bombings in Baghdad. But while the Iraqis wanted to concentrate on Baghdad's suburban belts where the vehicles were being assembled, MNF–I commander General George Casey concluded the real problem was pro-insurgent foreign fighters coming across the Syrian border. He ordered the Marines to launch a campaign that summer to secure the Western Euphrates River Valley (WERV). On 7 May a platoon from 3rd Battalion 25th Marines near Haditha was nearly overrun by insurgents, but ultimately rescued by one of its non-commissioned officers who was later awarded the Navy Cross. The next day the 2nd Marine Regiment began clearing insurgent havens in the WERV. The first major attack was Operation Matador, against the town of Ubaydi, which CENTCOM claimed was an insurgent staging area. Both 3rd Battalion 25th Marines and 3rd Battalion 2nd Marines participated in the attack. In most cases the insurgents vanished, leaving behind booby traps and mines. At least nine Marines were killed and 40 wounded in the operation, but the insurgents apparently returned to the town afterwards. AQI was interested in the WERV too. Zarqawi had reclaimed his base in western Anbar, declared Al Qaim as his capital, and was also operating in Hit and the Haditha Triad. On 8 May, the insurgent group Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna ambushed and killed a dozen mercenaries near Hīt. Two days later, Anbar Governor Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi was kidnapped and killed by insurgents near Rawah. He was replaced by Maamoon Sami Rasheed al-Alwani. MEF then began a series of operations in July, under the aegis of Operation Sayeed; in addition to clearing AQI from the WERV, Sayeed was also an attempt to set the conditions for the Anbaris to participate in the December constitutional referendum. They carried out countless operations, with names like New Market, Sword, Hunter, Zoba, Spear, River Gate, and Iron Fist, ultimately culminating in November's Operation Steel Curtain. In August, the 3rd Battalion 25th Marines conducted Operation Quick Strike, a cordon and search operation in the Haditha Triad. Twenty Marines were killed in two days: six snipers were ambushed and killed by Jamaat Ansar al-Sunna on 1 August, and fourteen Marines were killed on 3 August when their Amphibious Assault Vehicle was hit by a mine outside of Haditha. By October, more Americans had been killed in Anbar than anywhere else in Iraq and senior Marines had switched from talk about victory to simply "containing the violence and smuggling at a level that Iraqi forces can someday handle." ### October–December 2005 On 5 November, the 2nd Marine Regiment launched Operation Steel Curtain against the border town of Husaybah. The Marines reported that ten Marines and 139 insurgents died in the offensive. Medical workers in Husaybah claimed that 97 civilians were killed. On 1 December, ten Marines from 2nd Battalion 7th Marines were killed by a massive IED while on a foot patrol in Fallujah. On 15 October, the people of Anbar went to the polls to decide whether or not to ratify the new constitution. While the turnout (259,919 voters or 32% of eligible voters) was significantly higher than in the January elections, the results were similar: about 97% of the voters rejected the constitution. On 15 December, there was a follow-up election for the Iraqi parliament. Turn-out was even greater: 585,429 voters, or 86% of eligible voters. AQI launched a series of attacks in Jordan in late 2005 that were partially based out of Anbar. The group had already unsuccessfully attacked the Trebil checkpoint along the Jordanian border with Anbar Governorate in December 2004. In August, two US warships in Aqaba, the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ashland, were attacked with rockets; the cell which carried out the attacks then fled into Iraq. On 9 November, three Iraqis from Anbar carried out suicide bombings in Amman, killing 60. A fourth bomber, also from Anbar, was caught. ## 2006 ### Haditha killings In May 2006, the Marine Corps was rocked by allegations that a squad from 3rd Battalion 1st Marines had gone "on a rampage" the previous November, killing 24 unarmed Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha. The incident had occurred on 19 November 2005, following a mine attack on a convoy that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. A squad of Marines led by Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich had been riding in the convoy and immediately assumed control of the scene. Following the mine attack, the Marines stopped a white Opel sedan carrying five Iraqi men and shot them after they tried to run away, before the platoon commander arrived and took charge. The Marines say they were then fired upon from a nearby house, and Wuterich's men were ordered "to take the house". Both Iraqi and Marine eyewitnesses later agreed that Wutterich's squad cleared the house (and several nearby ones) by throwing in grenades, then entering the houses and shooting the occupants. They differed over whether the killings had been permitted under the rules of engagement. The Marines claimed that the houses had been "declared hostile" and that training dictated "that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot." Iraqis claimed the Marines had deliberately targeted civilians. In addition to the five Iraqi men killed by the sedan, nineteen other men, women, and children were killed by Wutterich's squad as they cleared the houses. Internal investigations were started in February by the Multi-National Force – Iraq, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (which examined the actual killings), and Major General Eldon Bargewell (who examined the Marines' response to the killings). A news article that alleged a massacre had occurred was published in March. Haditha became a national story in mid-May due to comments made by anti-war Congressman and former Marine John P. Murtha. Murtha incorrectly claimed the number of civilians killed was much higher than reported and that the Marines had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Murtha's broader point about troop misbehavior was reinforced by news of another killing where a squad of Marines executed an Iraqi man and then planted an AK-47 near his body in Hamdania, near Abu Ghraib, as well as the controversial Internet video Hadji Girl, showing a Marine joking about killing members of an Iraqi family. The military's internal investigation was concluded in June. Though Bargewell found no evidence of a cover-up, his report seriously criticized the Marine Corps for what he described as "inattention and negligence" as well as "an unwillingness, bordering on denial" by officers, especially senior officers, to investigate civilian deaths. MEF commander General Stephen Johnson later said that civilian deaths occurred "all the time", and did not find the high number of deaths to be particularly unusual. He referred to the deaths as "the cost of doing business on that particular engagement." On 21 December 2006, the US military charged eight Marines in connection with the Haditha incident. Four of the eight, including Wuterich, were accused of unpremeditated murder. On 3 October 2007, the preliminary hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and that Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide instead. Six defendants subsequently had their cases dropped and one was found not guilty. In 2012, Wuterich pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty in exchange for all other charges against him being dropped. At least three officers, including battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, were officially reprimanded for failing to properly report and investigate the killings. ### Second Battle of Ramadi In June 2006, Colonel Sean MacFarland and the 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) of the 1st Armored Division were sent to Ramadi. Colonel MacFarland was told to "Fix Ramadi, but don't do a Fallujah." Many Iraqis assumed the 1st BCT was preparing for exactly that type of operation, with over 77 M1 Abrams tanks and 84 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, but Colonel MacFarland had another plan. Prior to Ramadi, the 1st BCT had been stationed in the northern city of Tal Afar, where Colonel H. R. McMaster in 2005 had pioneered a new type of operation: "Clear, Hold, Build". Under McMaster's approach, his commanders saturated an area with soldiers until it had been cleared of insurgents, then held it until Iraqi security forces were gradually built to a level where they could assume control. As in other offensive operations, many insurgents fled the city in anticipation of a big battle. The 1st BCT moved into some of Ramadi's most dangerous neighborhoods and, beginning in July, built four of what would eventually become eighteen Combat Outposts. The soldiers brought the territory under control and inflicted many casualties on the insurgents in the process. On 24 July, AQI launched a counterattack, launching 24 assaults, each with about 100 fighters, on American positions. Despite the reported presence of AQI leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the insurgents failed in all of their attacks and lost about 30 men. Several senior American officers, including General David Petraeus, later compared the fighting to the Battle of Stalingrad. Despite the success, Multi-National Force – Iraq continued to view Ramadi as a secondary front to the ongoing civil war in Baghdad and considered moving two of Colonel MacFarland's battalions to Baghdad. Colonel MacFarland even publicly described his operations as "trying to take the heat off Baghdad." ### The Second Battle of Habbaniyah U.S. Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, swept through urban sprawl between Ramadi and Fallujah in a series of operations (i.e. Operations RUBICON and SIDEWINDER), disrupting flow of Al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents into both cities, and killing and capturing over 300 insurgents. Action centered around Kilo Company, nicknamed "Voodoo", in the towns of Husaybah, Bidimnah, and Julaybah on the outskirts of Ramadi. Kilo Marines killed or captured 137 insurgents; 4 Marines were killed in action, and 17 were wounded. Within Kilo itself, the squad most affected was "Voodoo Mobile", the vehicle-mounted element of the unit's HQ section. Of its 16 members, 12 were wounded and 3 killed between September and November 2006. During the seven-month deployment, fighting between Al Qaeda and the Marines was largely sporadic but intense. While only a handful of large-scale firefights developed—mostly in the suburbs of Ramadi between Habbaniyah and Julaybah—contact between the two sides was nearly continuous. Kilo Company officers reported sniper fire on a daily basis, as well as IED strikes on over 200 of the 250 + vehicle patrols they mounted. Operations consisted of a mixed array of company-scale urban "sweep-and-clear" operations, census and suppression patrols, and static, fortified area-denial positions. The battalion was spread out along a 30 kilometer front from the western fringes of Fallujah to the eastern boundary of Ramadi. During the battle, 14 Marines from the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines were killed and at least 123 were wounded. 12 of the 14 were killed by IED strikes, while the other two suffered mortal wounds from sniper fire. ### Awakening movement As the 1st Brigade pushed into Ramadi, it began aggressively courting the local tribes for police recruits. This was critical because, according to Colonel MacFarland, "without their help, we would not be able to recruit enough police to take back the entire city." After the Americans promised the tribal leaders in Ramadi that their men would not be sent outside of the city, the tribes began sending men into the police force. The number of Iraqis joining the police went from 30 a month before June 2006 to 300 a month by July. AQI tried to blunt police recruitment by attacking one of the new Ramadi police stations with a car bomb on 21 August, killing three Iraqi police. They simultaneously assassinated the Sunni sheikh of the Abu Ali Jassim tribe, who had encouraged many of his tribesmen to join the Iraqi Police. The AQI fighters hid the body instead of leaving it for the tribe, violating Islam's funeral rites and angering the tribe. This was one of the catalysts for what became a tribal revolt against AQI. According to David Kilcullen, who would later serve as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser to General Petraeus, the revolt began after AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give his daughters to them in marriage. During this time, one of Colonel MacFarland's subordinates, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Deane, had kept contact with a low-level sheikh from the Abu Risha tribe, Abdul Sattar Abu Risha. In 2004 and 2005, Sattar's father and three of his brothers had been killed by AQI, but he had refused exile. In early September, Sattar told Deane that his tribe and several others were planning to ally with the United States and throw out the Baghdad-based government. Dean informed Colonel MacFarland, who pledged to support Sattar as long as Sattar continued to back the Government of Iraq. On 9 September, Sattar and former Anbar Governor Fasal al Gaood, along with 50 other sheikhs, announced the formation of the Anbar Awakening movement. Shortly after the meeting, Colonel MacFarland began hearing reports that off-duty Iraqi police operating as the military wing of the Awakening had formed a shadowy vigilante organization called "Thuwar al-Anbar". Thuwar al-Anbar conducted terror attacks against known AQI operatives, while Colonel MacFarland and his soldiers turned a blind eye. Colonel MacFarland asked his tribal adviser, Captain Travis Patriquin, to prepare a brief for the Iraqi government and the MEF's staff and journalists, all of whom remained skeptical about arming Sunni tribes who might someday fight the Shi'a-led government. Patriquin's brief, called "How to Win in Al Anbar", used stick figures and simple language to convey the message that recruiting tribal militias into the police force was a more effective strategy than using the US military. Ricks referred to the briefing as "perhaps the most informal one given by the US military in Iraq and the most important one." It later became a viral phenomenon on the Internet and is still used as a training aid. Following the formation of the Awakening movement, violence in Ramadi continued to increase. On 29 September 2006 an insurgent threw a grenade onto a rooftop where a group of Navy SEALs were positioned. One of them, Master-at-Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, quickly smothered the grenade with his body and was killed. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor. On 18 October, AQI's umbrella organization, the Mujahideen Shura Council, formally declared Ramadi as a part of the Islamic State of Iraq. ### Operation Al Majid Even as the Awakening progressed, Anbar continued to be viewed as a lost cause. In mid-August, Colonel Peter Devlin, chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq, had given a particularly blunt briefing on the Anbar situation to General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Devlin told Pace that the US could not militarily defeat AQI in Anbar, as "AQI has become an integral part of the social fabric of western Iraq." He added that AQI had "eliminated, subsumed, marginalized, or co-opted" all other Sunni insurgents, tribes, or government institutions in the province. Devlin believed that the only way to reestablish control over the province was to deploy an additional division to Anbar, coupled with billions of dollars of aid, or by creating a "sizeable and legally approved paramilitary force". He concluded that all the Marines had accomplished was preventing things from being "far worse". In early September, Colonel Devlin's report was leaked to The Washington Post. MEF commander Major General Richard Zilmer responded to press queries about the statement that Anbar Governorate was lost. Zilmer said that he agreed with the assessment, but added that his mission was only to train Iraqi security forces. He added that if he were asked to achieve a wider objective he would need more forces, but that sending more Americans to Anbar would not pacify the province—that the only path to victory was for the Sunnis to accept the Government of Iraq. Some of the first offensive operations outside of Ramadi also began in late 2006, with the construction of 8-foot (2.4-meter) high dirt berms around several Iraqi cities in western Anbar: Haditha, Haqlaniyah, Barwanah, Rutbah, and Anah. The berming was part of Operation Al Majid, an American-led operation to clear and hold more than 30,000 square miles (78,000 km²) in western Anbar. Prior to Al Majid, a previous battalion commander had observed that his unit lacked the manpower to control both the main roads and towns of the Haditha Triad, that the Iraqi Army was as blind as they were, and that the insurgents were killing anyone who spoke to Coalition forces. The 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines had lost over 23 Marines in just two months trying to hold the area. In addition to the berms and the help of a local strongman known as Colonel Faruq, the Marines set up checkpoints in key locations to regulate entry and exit. By early January, attacks in the Triad had dropped from 10–13 per day to one every few days. The Iraq Study Group Report, released on 6 December, acknowledged that the Awakening movement had "started to take action", but concluded that "Sunni Arabs have not made the strategic decision to abandon violent insurgency in favor of the political process" and that the overall situation in Anbar was "deteriorating". On the same day, Captain Patriquin was killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi along with Major Megan McClung, the first female Marine officer to die in Iraq. Following the execution of Saddam Hussein, Saddam's family considered interring him in Ramadi because of the improved security situation. On 30 December, an unknown number of loyalists near Ramadi staged a march carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein and waving Iraqi flags. ## 2007 ### Surge In his State of the Union Address on 23 January 2007, President Bush announced plans to deploy more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq in what became known as the Surge. Four thousand were specifically earmarked for Anbar, which Bush acknowledged had become both an AQI haven and a center of resistance against AQI. Instead of deploying new units, the Marine Corps chose to extend the deployments of several units already in Anbar: 1st Battalion 6th Marines, 3rd Battalion 4th Marines, and the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). The 15th MEU would later be replaced by the 13th MEU as the last surge unit. AQI had its own offensives planned for 2007. In the first two months of 2007, it shot down eight helicopters throughout Iraq, including two in Anbar. One was brought down by a sophisticated SA-14 or SA-16 shoulder-fired missile on 7 February, near Karmah, killing five Marines and two sailors. AQI also began a series of chlorine bombings near Ramadi and Fallujah. The first attack was on 21 October 2006, when a car bomb carrying twelve 120 mm mortar shells and two 100-pound (45 kg) chlorine tanks was detonated in Ramadi. The AQI campaign intensified in January 2007. For five months, AQI carried out a series of suicide bombings in Anbar using conventional vehicle-borne explosive devices mixed with chlorine gas. The attacks in general were poorly executed, burning the chemical agent rather than dispersing it. AQI also continued its assassination campaign. On 19 February, AQI tried to kill Sheikh Sattar in his compound with a pair of suicide car bombs that missed the sheikh, but killed eleven. Several days later the Habbaniyah mosque of an imam who had spoken out against AQI was hit by a suicide bomber during Friday prayers, with 39 killed and 62 wounded. In June, a group of Anbar sheiks meeting in Baghdad's Mansour Hotel was attacked by a suicide bomber, with 13 killed, including Fasal al Gaood, and 27 wounded. On 30 June, a group of 70 AQI fighters planned to carry out a major attack on Ramadi targeting tribal leaders and police in the city, including Sheikh Sattar. Instead they stumbled into a squad from the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment near Donkey Island, and fought an all-night engagement that resulted in thirteen Americans dead or wounded and half the AQI fighters killed. ### MRAPs As the campaign in Al Anbar entered its fourth year the Marine Corps scored a major victory when it adopted a vehicle originally designed in the 1970s to withstand mine attacks: the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. As early as 2004, the Marine Corps recognized that it needed a replacement for its armored Humvees. The few Cougar MRAP initially deployed yielded impressive results. In 2004, the Marines reported that no troops had died in over 300 mine attacks on Cougars. In April 2007, General Conway estimated that the widespread use of the MRAP could reduce mine casualties in Anbar by as much as 80 percent. Now Commandant of the Marine Corps, he requested an additional 3,000 MRAPs for Anbar and told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he wanted to require every Marine traveling outside bases to ride in one. In April, the Deputy Commander for MEF said that in the 300 attacks on MRAPs in Anbar since January 2006, no Marines had been killed. On 8 May 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the acquisition of MRAPs was the Department of Defense's highest priority and earmarked 1.1 billion US dollars for them. The Marine Corps purchased and fielded large numbers of MRAPs throughout 2007. That October, General Conway described the MRAP as the "gold standard" of force protection. Deaths from mine attacks plummeted and in June 2008, USA Today reported that roadside bomb attacks and fatalities in Iraq had dropped almost 90 percent, partially due to MRAPs. ### Operation Alljah In June the Marine Corps launched Operation Alljah to secure Fallujah, Karma, Zaidon, and the Tharthar regions of eastern Anbar. These regions fell under the umbrella of Operation Phantom Thunder, an overall offensive throughout Iraq using US and Iraqi divisions on multiple fronts in an attempt to clear the areas surrounding Baghdad. In late 2006, the 1st Battalion 25th Marines had turned Fallujah over to the Iraqi Army and Police, who preferred to stay in defensive checkpoints and not patrol the city. Colonel Richard Simcock, whose 6th Marine Regiment would retake the city, later admitted that the Marines had pulled out too soon. In June, he sent the 2nd Battalion 6th Marines into Fallujah, dividing it up into ten precincts and sending Marines and Iraqi Police into each precinct in a duplication of 1st Battalion 6th Marines' operations in Ramadi. In May, General Gaskin began planning to retake the city of Karmah, which sat astride a main supply route between Fallujah and Baghdad and was an important insurgent stronghold. Unlike other locales, Karmah had no definable perimeter, making it easy for outsiders to access, as when insurgents fled to Karmah after being pushed out of Baghdad. Gaskin sent one of his aides to Jordan to meet with Sheikh Mishan, head of Karmah's largest tribe, the Jumayli. Sheikh Mishan fled to Jordan in 2005 after receiving threats from AQI. Gaskin's aide was able to persuade the sheikh to return in June, partnered with 2nd Battalion 5th Marines. By October, insurgent attacks had dropped to almost zero. In May, the 13th MEU moved into Tharthar, a 970-square-mile (2,500 km²) area that was AQI's last Anbar refuge. Their goal was to cut off insurgent travel between Anbar and Saladin Governorates into Baghdad and to uncover weapons caches. Resistance was light and many insurgents fled. The insurgents laid over 400 mines to slow the Marines down. In one operation, Marines found 18 tons of homemade explosives and 48,000 pounds (22,000 kg) of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. They uncovered several mass graves, containing a total of over 100 victims left behind by AQI. Tharthar was cleared by August. Operation Alljah was one of the last significant Anbar offensives. By late October, weeks passed without casualties. ### America declares victory > When you stand on the ground here in Anbar ... you can see what the future of Iraq can look like. President Bush flew to Al Asad Airbase in western Anbar Governorate on 3 September, to showcase what he referred to as a "military success" and "what the future of Iraq can look like". While there, he met with top US and Iraqi leadership and held a "war council". Frederick Kagan, one of the "intellectual architects" of the Surge, referred to the visit as the "Gettysburg" of the Iraq War and observed that Bush thought Anbar was "safe enough for the war cabinet of the United States of America to meet there with the senior leadership of the government of Iraq to discuss strategy." A week after Bush's visit, on 10 September, General David Petraeus, the Commanding General of Multi-National Force – Iraq, and United States Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker gave their Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq. General Petraeus specifically singled out Anbar Province as a major improvement, referring to the tribal uprisings there as "the most significant development of the past 8 months". He mentioned the dramatic improvements in security, stating that enemy attacks had decreased from a high of 1,350 in October 2006 to approximately 200 in August 2007. Ambassador Crocker referred to Anbar Governorate in his Congressional testimony. He was careful to credit the victory to AQI "overplay[ing] its hand" and to the tribal uprising being directed primarily against the "excesses" of AQI. He also referred to the Government of Iraq recruiting "21,000 Anbaris [in] police roles", a carefully chosen phrase as many of them were tribal militia. The two referred to Anbar Province a total of 24 times in their testimony. Three days later, on 13 September, Sheikh Sattar and three other men were killed by a bomb planted near his house in Ramadi. AQI claimed responsibility for the attack and twenty people were arrested in connection with the killing, including the Sheikh's own head of security. About 1,500 mourners attended Sheikh Sattar's funeral, including senior Iraqi and American officials. The leadership of the Anbar Salvation Council then passed to Sheikh Sattar's brother Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha. In December, al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released an interview where he denied that the tribes of Anbar Province were supporting the Americans, praising them as "noble and honorable" and referring to the Awakening as "scum". ## 2008–2011 ### Transition Beginning in February 2008, US forces began returning political and military control of Anbar to Iraqis. On 14 February, 1st Battalion 7th Marines withdrew from Hīt. Two days later, American and Iraqi forces conducted a joint heliborne operation meant to show off the Iraqi security forces. More significantly, in late March, both Iraqi Army divisions in Anbar Governorate, the 1st and 7th Divisions, were sent south to participate in the Battle of Basra. Their participation helped win the battle for the government forces and showcased the major improvements to the Iraqi Army. On 26 March 2008, B Squadron of the British SAS as part of Task Force Knight were called upon to hit a terrorist bomb-makers' house in the early hours. After trying to call him out and getting no response they stormed the house, receiving a hail of fire that left four men wounded while a terrorist from another building joined in the firefight. With helicopter support, they pressed on and chased their targets into another house that used civilians as hostages who were then accidentally killed alongside the terrorists. One SAS operator was killed. Earlier in January, AQI leader Ayyub al-Masri ordered his fighters in Anbar to "get away from the massive indiscriminate killings" and "refocus attacks on American troops, Sunnis cooperating closely with U.S. forces, and Iraq's infrastructure." AQI also ordered its fighters to avoid targeting Sunni tribesman, and even offered amnesty towards Awakening tribal leaders. On 19 April, al-Masri called for a month-long offensive against US and Iraqi forces. In Anbar, that offensive may have begun four days earlier on 15 April, when 18 people (including five Iraqi police) were killed in two suicide bombings near Ramadi. On 22 April, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into an entry-control point in Ramadi manned by over 50 Marines and Iraqi police. Two Marines engaged the driver who detonated his bomb early, killing the guards and wounding 26 Iraqis. Both Marines were posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. On 8 May, a group of insurgents crossed the Syrian border near Al Qaim and killed 11 Iraqi policemen and military officers. That same day, four Marines were killed in a roadside blast in Lahib, a farming village just east of Karmah. On 16 May, a suicide car bomber attacked a Fallujah police station, killing four and wounding nine. In June, it was announced that Al Anbar Governorate would be the tenth province to transfer to Provincial Iraqi Control, the first such Sunni region. This handover was delayed by bad weather and a suicide bombing on 26 June in Karmah at a meeting between Sunni Sheikhs and US Marines which killed more than 23 people, including three Marines. In July, presidential candidate Barack Obama visited Ramadi and met with Governor Rasheed, Sheikh Abu Rish, and 30 other sheikhs and senior military personnel. In the meeting, Obama promised that "the United States will not abandon Iraq" (his opponent, John McCain, had visited Haditha in March 2008). On 26 August, Iraqi leaders signed the Command and Control Memorandum of Understanding in a ceremony at the Anbar Governance Center, a step towards taking full control and responsibility for security from Coalition forces. Less than a week later, on 1 September, the transition became official. ### Drawdown The last major military action in Al Anbar Governorate occurred on 26 October 2008, when a group of Army Special Forces conducted a raid into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, the leader of a network of foreign fighters who were traveling through Syria. Anbar continued to play a large role in the Iraqi insurgency. That same month AQI announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an umbrella group led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a cleric from Anbar. After both Al-Baghdadi and Al-Masri were killed in Tikrit in April 2010, the US believed the new leader of AQI/ISI was Abu Dua al-Badri, a former Emir of Rawa who was married to a woman from Fallujah. In late 2008, US forces began accelerating their move out of cities across Iraq, turning over the task of maintaining security to Iraqi forces. The Marines pulled out of both Fallujah and Haditha Dam in November and December. Lance Corporal Brandon Lara from 3rd Battalion 4th Marines was the last American service member killed in Anbar, on 19 July 2009. In early August, a unit of Marines operating in Anbar located and recovered the body of Navy Captain Scott Speicher, who had been missing in action since the 1991 Gulf War. By 6 October 2009, the last two Marine Regiments had left, ending the American combat presence. Experts and many Iraqis were worried that AQI might resurface and attempt mass-casualty attacks to destabilize the country. There was a spike in the number of suicide attacks, and AQI rebounded in strength through November 2009 and appeared to be launching a concerted effort to cripple the government. There were a number of car bombings in Ramadi, Haditha and Al Qaim following the US withdrawal from Iraqi cities on 30 June. Throughout the last months of the year, additional attacks, mainly assassinations, occurred around Fallujah and Abu Ghraib. In October, twin bombings killed 26 people and wounded 65 at a reconciliation meeting in Ramadi. In December, a coordinated double suicide bombing outside Ramadi's government compound killed 25 people and severely wounded Governor Qasim Al-Fahdawi, who lost an arm. Violence continued through the last months of 2011. In September, a bus carrying Shia pilgrims from neighboring Karbala Governorate was stopped outside of Ramadi and 22 were executed, prompting threats from Karbala to annex parts of southern Anbar, including the city of Nukhayb. In November, the provincial council in Anbar announced that it was considering whether to form a semi-autonomous region with other governorates in the Sunni areas of Iraq. As the Americans withdrew, many Iraqis and Americans questioned the ability of the Iraqi security forces, especially the police, to protect the province. Others expressed skepticism over whether Iran would dominate Iraq and whether the Iraqi government would be able to provide security. One angry Iraqi described the American legacy as "total destruction ... you just came in, destroyed, and left." Discussing the American withdrawal, a journalist in Fallujah predicted that the Government of Iraq would continue to have trouble with Anbar Province, saying, "Anbar was where instability began in Iraq. It was where stability returned. And it is where instability could start again." ### Withdrawal The United States military in Al Anbar Governorate had a series of reorganizations in late 2009 and early 2010. The last non-American foreign forces left Iraq on 31 July 2009 and Multi-National Forces West became United States Force – West. On 23 January 2010, the Marines formally left both Anbar Governorate and Iraq, transferring American military commitments over to the United States Army's 1st Armored Division. The Army promptly merged United States Division West with United States Division – Baghdad, creating United States Division – Center to advise Iraqi forces in both Anbar and Baghdad. In December 2010, the 25th Infantry Division assumed responsibility for Anbar Province. On 7 December, the United States transferred its last base in Anbar, Al Asad, to the Iraqi Government. One week later, hundreds of Fallujah residents celebrated the pullout by burning American flags in the city. ## Human rights abuses Both sides committed human rights abuses in Anbar Province, often involving civilians caught in the middle of the conflict. By late 2005, abuses had gotten so common that one American officer nonchalantly referred to "discovering ... 20 bodies here, 20 bodies there" and the head of MNF-W referred to them as "a cost of doing business." During Operation Steel Curtain, insurgents forced their way into peoples' houses and held them hostage while engaging in gun battles with American forces, who often destroyed the homes. One Sunni Iraqi family described how in 2006 they fled the sectarian violence in Baghdad to Hīt. During their yearlong stay in Hīt, they watched AQI fighters kidnap a man for talking back to them; the fighters later dumped the man's body on his doorstep. The family also watched an American patrol hit a mine in front of their house, and worried that the Americans would conduct reprisal killings on the family. An Iraqi sheikh spoke about how he was accidentally shot and arrested by the Americans and thrown in Abu Ghraib prison where he was tortured. After his release he was targeted by insurgents in Fallujah who thought he was an American spy. ### By the Coalition For the American forces, abuses were typically either a disproportionate use of firepower or servicemen committing extrajudicial killings (such as in Haditha). Many accusations of human rights violations against the United States were connected with the First and Second Battles of Fallujah. Following the assault, the United States military admitted it had employed white phosphorus artillery rounds, the use of which is not permitted in civilian areas under the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Several Marines, all of them from the 3rd Battalion 1st Marines, were later charged (but not convicted) with executing Iraqi prisoners. Some British advisers also complained that the Marines had little regard for civilian casualties and had used munitions containing depleted uranium that caused birth defects for years after the battle. American forces also killed civilians through aerial bombing. Between 2003 and 2007, 1,700 Iraqis on all sides were killed by aerial attack in Anbar Governorate. On 19 May 2004, 42 civilians were killed near Al Qaim when American planes mistakenly bombed a wedding party. In November 2004, 59 civilians were killed when the US bombed Fallujah's Central Health Center. In November 2006, an American airstrike in Ramadi killed 30 civilians. Some accusations, such as the alleged bombing of a Fallujah mosque in April 2004 that killed 40, were later proven to be exaggerated or false. An unknown number of Iraqis in Anbar were also killed through Escalation of Force (EOF) incidents, where American troops were allowed to fire at suspicious-looking Iraqi vehicles and persons under their rules of engagement. These incidents typically occurred at both coalition checkpoints and near coalition convoys on the road. One civil affairs officer recounted two separate incidents in Ramadi where families in cars were fired on for not stopping at checkpoints: in one incident the husband was killed; in another, the wife died and a boy was critically wounded. Other violations involved detainee abuse. An August 2003 memo on detainee interrogations prompted one soldier with the 3rd ACR in Anbar to reply that "the gloves need to come off." In November 2003, former Iraqi general Abed Hamed Mowhoush died at a detention facility near Al Qaim after US Army interrogators stuffed him inside a sleeping bag and beat him to death. In 2005, several members of the 82nd Airborne described how in 2003 they beat and abused prisoners at Camp Mercury, a forward operating base near Fallujah. Iraqi security forces also committed abuses. In 2007, a Marine commander near Tharthar uncovered several instances of Iraqi soldiers raping civilians and Iraqi police torturing prisoners. Finally, while not an abuse, there was a perception among some Iraqis that Americans did not care about them. A leading cleric in Anbar later complained that: > If an American patrol was on the highway, and they saw a dead person, they would just leave him there. And this really started to create hatred toward the American GIs, because they couldn't care less what happened to Iraqis. If they were killed right in front of them, they did not get involved. ... When the terrorists attacked the national mosque in 2005 ... American forces were 200 yards away ... and did not interfere. ### By insurgents The various insurgent groups regularly executed and tortured suspected Iraqi collaborators and captured Westerners, as well as Iraqis they considered insufficiently religious. One Iraqi Christian told Human Rights Watch how he was stopped by insurgents in Anbar and ordered to convert to Islam or face death. Another Iraqi Shia related how insurgents from other Arab countries had expelled many Kurds and Shi'ia from cities and executed others. After the Second Battle of Fallujah, American forces uncovered Al Qaeda torture and execution chambers, which had been used on Iraqis suspected of working with Westerners or the Iraqi government. Some of the chambers still contained victims. Some executions, like those of Nicholas Berg and Kim Sun-il, had been videotaped by their perpetrators. Some Fallujah residents stated that during the battle, Al Qaeda had shot anyone trying to leave. In Haditha, after the Marines were withdrawn in order to fight in Fallujah, insurgents "rounded up dozens of local police officers and publicly executed them in a soccer stadium." When the Marines were withdrawn a second time later in 2004 there were similar massacres of local police. They enforced strict Islamic laws, such as breaking the fingers of smokers, whipping those who drank alcohol, and banning shops from selling images of women. An Iraqi woman from Ramadi said Al-Qaeda banned women from driving or walking alone by themselves. AQI also abused local women, which antagonized some of the local tribes. Women, pretending to be seamstresses, were drafted to reconnoiter houses and report on the presence of Iraqi police in hiding. If they could not find the police, they would settle for killing their close relatives. They also murdered countless Iraqis: doctors, mullahs, college graduates, even women and children—anyone they thought might be connected to the Americans. In 2007, American Marines found several mass graves near Lake Tharthar containing a total of over 100 victims. ### Reactions According to Sheikh Ahmed Abu Risha, many Iraqis became disaffected with AQI but were hesitant to take up arms against them out of fear. Sheikh Ahmed said that the biggest complaint about AQI was that they were unable to create a degree of normalcy, and that "people [who] are wearing masks ... cannot build the country". Other sheikhs specifically said that the large number of killings and kidnappings by AQI prompted the tribal revolt. AQI leader Ayyub al-Masri practically admitted as much in 2008 when he ordered fighters in Anbar to avoid harming Sunnis who were not working closely with coalition forces and "not interfere in social issues". However, David Kilcullen argued that the abuses themselves may have been less of an issue than AQI disrupting the tribes' smuggling businesses, the belief that AQI was linked to Iran, and their general "high-handed" behavior. He added that, whatever the spark, there was already a perception that AQI "had it coming". In the United States, incidents like detainee abuse and the Haditha killings became front-page news, but many Iraqi deaths by American or Iraqi security forces went unreported. While the U.S. military claimed that "the vast majority" of Iraqi deaths were caused by other Iraqis, incidents like Fallujah and Haditha caused many Iraqis to become embittered towards the Americans. This later led to Iraqi outrage in 2011, when the U.S. unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a long-term presence in Iraq that would give immunity to American military personnel. Iraqis were further angered by what they perceived as a "travesty of justice" over the lack of convictions of American military personnel. Writing in the aftermath of the Haditha killings, retired U.S. Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich said: > Who bears responsibility for these Iraqi deaths? The young soldiers pulling the triggers? The commanders who establish rules of engagement that privilege "force protection" over any obligation to protect innocent life? The intellectually bankrupt policymakers who sent U.S. forces into Iraq in the first place and now see no choice but to press on? The culture that, to put it mildly, has sought neither to understand nor to empathize with people in the Arab or Islamic worlds? ## See also - Iraqi insurgency (post-U.S. withdrawal) - Anbar campaign (2013–14) - List of decorated Americans from the Iraq War in Al Anbar Governorate - Ramadi under U.S. Military Occupation

Manzanar

World War II Japanese-American internment camp in California

Manzanar is the site of one of ten American concentration camps, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II from March 1942 to November 1945. Although it had over 10,000 inmates at its peak, it was one of the smaller internment camps. It is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California's Owens Valley, between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles. Manzanar means "apple orchard" in Spanish. The Manzanar National Historic Site, which preserves and interprets the legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the United States, was identified by the United States National Park Service as the best-preserved of the ten former camp sites. The first Japanese Americans arrived at Manzanar in March of 1942, just one month after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, to build the camp their families would be staying in. Manzanar was in operation as an internment camp from 1942 until 1945. Since the last of those incarcerated left in 1945, former detainees and others have worked to protect Manzanar and to establish it as a National Historic Site to ensure that the history of the site, along with the stories of those who were incarcerated there, is recorded for current and future generations. The primary focus is the Japanese American incarceration era, as specified in the legislation that created the Manzanar National Historic Site. The site also interprets the former town of Manzanar, the ranch days, the settlement by the Owens Valley Paiute, and the role that water played in shaping the history of the Owens Valley. ## Background Manzanar was first inhabited by Indigenous Americans nearly 10,000 years ago. Approximately 1,500 years ago, the area was settled by the Owens Valley Paiute, who ranged across the Owens Valley from Long Valley on the north to Owens Lake on the south, and from the crest of the Sierra Nevada on the west to the Inyo Mountains on the east. When European American settlers first arrived in the Owens Valley in the mid-19th century, they found a number of large Paiute villages in the Manzanar area. John Shepherd, one of the first of the new settlers, homesteaded 160 acres (65 ha) of land 3 miles (5 km) north of Georges Creek in 1864. With the help of Owens Valley Paiute field workers and laborers, he expanded his ranch to 2,000 acres (810 ha). In 1905, George Chaffey, an agricultural developer from Southern California, purchased Shepherd's ranch and subdivided it, along with other adjacent ranches. He founded the town of Manzanar in 1910, along the main line of the Southern Pacific. By August 1911, the town's population was approaching 200. The company built an irrigation system over an area of 1,000 acres (400 ha) and planted about 20,000 fruit trees. By 1920, the town had more than 25 homes, a two-room school, a town hall, and a general store. Also at that time, nearly 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of apple, pear, and peach trees were under cultivation; along with crops of grapes, prunes, potatoes, corn and alfalfa; and large vegetable and flower gardens. As early as March 1905, the City of Los Angeles began acquiring water rights in the Owens Valley. In 1913, it completed construction of its 233-mile (375 km) Los Angeles Aqueduct, In dry years, Los Angeles pumped ground water and drained all surface water, diverting all of it into its aqueduct and leaving Owens Valley ranchers without water. Without water for irrigation, the holdout ranchers were forced off their ranches and out of their communities; that included the town of Manzanar, which was abandoned by 1929. Manzanar remained uninhabited until the United States Army leased 6,200 acres (2,500 ha) from the City of Los Angeles for the Manzanar War Relocation Center. ## Establishment After the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Government swiftly moved to begin solving the "Japanese Problem" on the West Coast of the United States. In the evening hours of that same day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested selected "enemy aliens", including more than 5,500 Issei men. Many citizens in California were alarmed about potential activities by people of Japanese descent. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to designate military commanders to prescribe military areas and to exclude "any or all persons" from such areas. The order also authorized the construction of what were later called "relocation centers" by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), to house those who were to be excluded. This order resulted in the forced relocation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens; the rest had been prevented from becoming citizens by federal law. Over 110,000 were incarcerated in the ten concentration camps located far inland and away from the coast. Manzanar was the first of the ten concentration camps to be established, and began accepting detainees in March 1942. Initially, it was a temporary "reception center", known as the Owens Valley Reception Center from March 21, 1942, to May 31, 1942. At that time, it was operated by the US Army's Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA). The Owens Valley Reception Center was transferred to the WRA on June 1, 1942, and officially became the "Manzanar War Relocation Center." The first Japanese Americans to arrive at Manzanar were volunteers who helped build the camp. By mid–April, up to 1,000 Japanese Americans were arriving daily, and by July, the population of the camp neared 10,000. About 90 percent of the incarcerated were from the Los Angeles area, with the rest coming from Stockton, California; and Bainbridge Island, Washington. Many were farmers and fishermen. Manzanar held 10,046 adults and children at its peak, and a total of 11,070 were incarcerated there. ## Camp conditions and facilities ### Climate and location The Manzanar facility was located between Lone Pine and Independence. The weather at Manzanar caused suffering for the inmates, few of whom were accustomed to the extremes of the area's climate. While the majority of people were from the Los Angeles area, some were from places with much different climates (such as Bainbridge Island in Washington). The temporary buildings were inadequate to shield people from the weather. The Owens Valley lies at an elevation of about 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Summers on the desert floor of the Owens Valley are generally hot, with temperatures often exceeding 100 °F (38 °C). Winters bring occasional snowfall and daytime temperatures that often drop into the 40 °F (4 °C) range. At night, temperatures are generally 30 to 40 °F (16.7 to 22.2 °C) lower than the daytime highs, and high winds are common day or night. The area's mean annual precipitation is barely five inches (12.7 cm). The ever-present dust was a continual problem due to the frequent high winds; so much so that people usually woke up in the morning covered from head to toe with a fine layer of dust, and they constantly had to sweep dirt out of the barracks. "In the summer, the heat was unbearable," said former Manzanar inmate Ralph Lazo. "In the winter, the sparsely rationed oil didn't adequately heat the tar paper-covered pine barracks with knotholes in the floor. The wind would blow so hard, it would toss rocks around." ### Camp layout and facilities The camp site was situated on 6,200 acres (2,500 ha) at Manzanar, leased from the City of Los Angeles, with the developed portion covering approximately 540 acres (220 ha). Eight guard towers equipped with machine guns were located at intervals around the perimeter fence, which was topped by barbed wire. The grid layout used in the camp was standard, and a similar layout was used in all of the relocation centers. The residential area was about one square mile (2.6 km²), and consisted of 36 blocks of hastily constructed, 20-foot (6.1 m) by 100-foot (30 m) tarpaper barracks, with each family (up to eight people) living in a single 20-foot (6.1 m) by 25-foot (7.6 m) "apartment" in the barracks. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, a Manzanar survivor, described the living conditions in her book: “After dinner we were taken to Block 16, a cluster of fifteen barracks that had just been finished a day or so earlier—although finished was hardly a word for it. The shacks were built of pine planking covered with tarpaper. They sat on concrete footings, with about two feet of open space between the floorboards and the ground. Gaps showed between the planks, and as the weeks passed and the green wood dried out, the gaps widened. Knotholes gaped in the uncovered floor.” (Farewell to Manzanar pg. 18) In the book, she goes on to explain the size and layout of the barracks. They were divided into six units that were sixteen long by twenty feet wide, and a single light bulb hung from the ceiling. They had an oil stove for heat as well as two army blankets each, some mattress covers and steel army cots. These apartments consisted of partitions with no ceilings, eliminating any chance of privacy. Lack of privacy was a major problem, especially since the camp had communal men's and women's latrines. Former Manzanar inmate Rosie Kakuuchi said that the communal facilities were "[o]ne of the hardest things to endure", adding that neither the latrines nor showers had partitions or stalls. Each residential block also had a communal mess hall (large enough to serve 300 people at one time), a laundry room, a recreation hall, an ironing room, and a heating oil storage tank, although Block 33 lacked a recreation hall. In addition to the residential blocks, Manzanar had 34 additional blocks that had staff housing, camp administration offices, two warehouses, a garage, a camp hospital, and 24 firebreaks. The camp had school facilities, a high-school auditorium (that was also used as a theatre), staff housing, chicken and hog farms, churches, a cemetery, a post office, a hospital, an orphanage, two community latrines, an outdoor theater, and other necessary amenities that one would expect to find in most American cities. Some of the facilities were not built until after the camp had been operating for a while. The camp perimeter had eight watchtowers manned by armed military police, and it was enclosed by five-strand barbed wire. There were sentry posts at the main entrance. Many of the camp administration staff lived inside the fence at the camp, though the military police lived outside the fence. ### Commercial facilities Typical businesses such as a cooperative store and other shops and a camp newspaper were operated by the internees. A camouflage net factory, to provide the nets to various military units, was operated on the site. An experimental plantation for producing natural rubber from the Guayule plant was built and operated. Before a hospital was built, doctors in the camp faced many difficulties, including treating internees for diseases such as measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, and diarrhea. Treatment facilities were often the barracks, which did not include running water or heating. Once the Manzanar Hospital was built, it included a kitchen, operating rooms, treatment wards, laboratories, and other facilities. All medical treatment in Manzanar was provided at no charge. Manzanar Children's Village, an orphanage housing 101 Japanese American orphans from June 1942 to September 1945, operated within the camp. Children incarcerated there were from multiple orphanages in the Los Angeles area as well as locations in Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. Infants born to unmarried mothers in other WRA camps were also sent to Children's Village over the next three years. The 61 remaining children in Maryknoll, Shonien and the Salvation Army Home were slated for removal. On June 23, 1942, they were bused, under armed guard, with several adult caretakers, from Los Angeles to Manzanar. Over the next few months, approximately thirty more children from Washington, Oregon and Alaska, mostly orphans who had been living with non-Japanese foster families, would arrive in Manzanar. ## Life in camp After being uprooted from their homes and communities, the incarcerated people had to endure primitive, sub-standard conditions and lack of privacy. They had to wait in line for meals, at latrines, and at the laundry room. Each camp was intended to be self-sufficient, and Manzanar was no exception. Cooperatives operated various services, such as the camp newspaper, beauty salons and barber shops, shoe repair, libraries, and more. In addition, there were some who raised chickens, hogs, and vegetables, and cultivated the existing orchards for fruit. During the time Manzanar was in operation, 188 weddings were held, 541 children were born in the camp, and between 135 and 146 individuals died. Life in the camp became more difficult as sickness spread throughout it. The housing sector of the camp was just 500 acres and held more than ten thousand prisoners at its peak. The compactness of the camp led many people to fall ill even though they were given vaccines upon arrival to the camp. The water at Manzanar was unclean, and caused many inmates to suffer from dysentery. Some of those interned at the camp supported the policies implemented by the War Relocation Authority, causing them to be targeted by others in the camp. On December 6, 1942, a riot broke out and two internees were killed. Togo Tanaka was one of those targeted, but he escaped by disguising himself and mingling into the crowd that was searching for him. Others were outraged that their patriotism was being questioned simply because of their ethnic heritage. Despite the hardships endured, the internees gradually "turned [the] concentration camp into a community" by "[spending] their days creating beautiful things". ### Food The barracks at Manzanar had no cooking areas, and all meals were served at block mess halls. The mess hall lines were long and stretched outside regardless of weather. The cafeteria-style eating was named by the 1980s Congressional Committee on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) as a cause of the deterioration of the family due to children wanting to eat with their friends instead of their families, and families not always being able to eat together. There was a strict meal schedule, with one young detainee noting "We eat from 7:00 AM to 8:00 AM o'clock in the morning 12:00 PM-1:00 PM in afternoon and 5:00 PM-6:00 in night and on Sunday we eat 8:00 AM-9:00." Food at Manzanar was based on military requirements. Meals usually consisted of hot rice and vegetables, since meat was scarce due to rationing. In 1944, a chicken ranch and a hog farm began operation, providing the camp with meat. As many of the internees were farmers, they used their knowledge of fertilizers, irrigation, land reclamation, and cultivation to successfully grow productive gardens. They made their own soy sauce and tofu. Many families had small gardens outside their barracks. The food varied in quality, but was mostly substandard compared to the food the internees ate prior to incarceration. Togo Tanaka described how people "got sick from eating ill-prepared food." Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga described trying to take care of her newborn daughter, saying that the child was so sick that, while "[m]ost infants double their weight, birth weight, at six months", her daughter "had not doubled her weight in a year". The food in Manzanar was heavily starchy and low quality, including Vienna sausages, canned string beans, hot dogs, and apple sauce. Outside of the sausages and hot dogs, meat was rare, usually consisting of chicken or mutton that was heavily breaded and fried. Frank Kikuchi, an internee at Manzanar, stated that some of the newspapers lied to the American public by telling them that the "Japs [in the camps] are getting steaks, chops, eggs, or eating high off the hog." Camp, school, and individual gardens eventually helped supplement the menu in the mess halls, Internees also snuck out of the camp to go fishing, often bringing back their catches to the camp. Harry Ueno accused camp administrators and leaders in the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) of stealing food meant for the internees and then selling it on the black market. During the December 1942 camp riot, Ueno was arrested for allegedly beating another internee who was a member of the JACL. ### Employment Most of the adults were employed at Manzanar to keep the camp running. In order for the camps to be self-sufficient, the adults were employed in a variety of jobs to supply the camp and the military. Jobs included clothing and furniture manufacturing, farming and tending orchards, military manufacturing such as camouflage netting and experimental rubber, teaching, civil service jobs such as police, fire fighters, and nursing, and general service jobs operating stores, beauty parlors, and a bank. A farm and orchards provided vegetables and fruits for use by the camp, and people of all ages worked to maintain them. By the summer of 1943, camp gardens and farms were producing potatoes, onions, cucumbers, Chinese cabbage, watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, aster, red radishes, and peppers. Eventually, there were more than 400 acres of farms producing more than 80 percent of the produce used by the camp. In early 1944, a chicken ranch began operation, and in late April of the same year, the camp opened a hog farm. Both operations provided welcome meat supplements to the diet. Shortly after being interned, Togo Tanaka and Joe Masaoka were hired by anthropologist Robert Redfield as documentary historians for the camp. In addition to his work at the Manzanar Free Press, he filed hundreds of reports to the WRA that often criticized those in charge at the camp and the living conditions in the camp. Unskilled workers earned US\$8 per month (\$ per month as of 2023), semi-skilled workers earned \$12 per month (\$ per month as of 2023), skilled workers made \$16 per month (\$ per month as of 2023), and professionals earned \$19 per month (\$ per month as of 2023). In addition, everybody received \$3.60 per month (\$ per month as of 2023) as a clothing allowance. ### Manzanar Free Press The Manzanar Free Press was first published April 11, 1942, and was published through the October 19, 1945, issue. It was published with both Japanese and English sections, with the Japanese section added on July 14, 1942. Between the first issue and the May 31, 1942, issue, it was published at the Manzanar Assembly Center, which was operated by the Wartime Civil Control Administration. After that, it was published at the Manzanar Relocation Center until it ceased publication. The paper was originally published as four pages biweekly which were hand-typed and mimeographed. The circulation increased as the number of people in the camp grew, the release increased to three issues weekly, and a printing press was acquired, allowing the paper to be typeset beginning on July 22, 1942. The page count also increased to six. Journalists who reported for the newspaper include Togo Tanaka, who was the English section editor of the Rafu Shimpo before being incarcerated. Tanaka also delivered the Free Press before working as a journalist for them. While working as a reporter for the Free Press, Tanaka wrote hundreds of articles documenting the everyday life in the camp. Beginning on July 22, 1942, Chiye Mori, poet and journalist, was listed as an editor. Despite the name of the newspaper, the War Relocation Authority (WRA) controlled the content of the paper and used it to publish announcements from the camp administration, news from other camps, orders, rules and guidelines from the WRA, and upcoming camp events, in addition to the regular content. Some content was not allowed to be published. The standard content included articles about life in the camps, sports scores and coverage, coverage of the war, and so on. ### Recreation People made life at Manzanar more tolerable through recreation. They participated in sports, including baseball, football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, softball, and martial arts. A nine-hole golf course was built at the camp. Lou Frizzell served as the musical director, and under his mentorship Mary Nomura became known as the "songbird of Manzanar" for her performances at dances and other camp events. Theatre performances—for internees, camp administration and WRA staff, and even for some members of the surrounding communities—included original productions by internees as well as traditional Japanese works of kabuki and noh. Internees, many of whom were relocated from their landscaping businesses in the Los Angeles area, personalized and beautified their barren surroundings by building elaborate gardens and parks, which often included pools, waterfalls, and rock ornaments. Competitions were often held between landscapers as they created gardens in the public spaces of the camp (such as between barracks). The camp administration even allowed some gardens to be created outside the camp. These helped create a sense of community and gave the internees a place to heal. Remnants of some of the gardens, pools, and rock ornaments are still present at Manzanar, and there are plans to restore at least some of them. One of the most popular pastimes for those incarcerated at Manzanar was baseball. The men there formed almost 100 baseball teams, and the women formed 14. Regular seasons were established, teams were divided into leagues, and championship games were held. The teams included both professional and amateur players. Some of the players viewed playing baseball as a way to prove their loyalty to America, treating it like wearing an American flag. Photographer Ansel Adams took his photo (right) as part of his effort to show how those incarcerated at Manzanar "overcome [their] sense of defeat and despair." Many Japanese cultural celebrations were continued, though the official photos allowed out by the WRA rarely showed them. The New Year tradition of mochitsuki—pounding glutinous rice into mochi—was regularly covered by the camp newspaper. Craftsman in the camp carved geta for many of the residents, though the official photography only pointed out that they were useful for keeping above the dusty ground. ### Manzanar Riot Although most quietly accepted their fate during World War II, there was some resistance in the camps. Poston, Heart Mountain, Topaz, and Tule Lake each had civil disturbances about wage differences, black marketing of sugar, food shortages, intergenerational friction, rumors of "informers" reporting to the camp administration or the FBI, and other issues. The most serious incident occurred at Manzanar on December 5–6, 1942 (with some of the actions on both sides carrying over into the following days), and became known as the "Manzanar Revolt" or "Manzanar Riot". Some of the tension that precipitated the riot was related to work availability and the pay of those jobs, with Nisei and members of the JACL getting preferential treatment. After several months of tension between those who supported the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and a group of Kibei (Japanese Americans educated in Japan), rumors spread that sugar and meat shortages were the result of black marketing by camp administrators. To make matters worse, JACL leader Fred Tayama was beaten by six masked men on the evening of December 5. Harry Ueno, the leader of the Kitchen Workers Union, and two others suspected of involvement, were arrested. The other two suspects were questioned and released, but Ueno was removed from Manzanar. About 200 internees met on the morning of December 6 in the gardens at the Block 22 mess hall to discuss what they should do, and another meeting was scheduled for a few hours later. Between two and four thousand people gathered at the meeting where they listened to speeches and chose five people to present their grievances to the camp director. The crowd decided to follow the five representatives, which caused the camp director to tell the military police to muster in order to be available to control the crowd. The five representatives demanded that Ueno be released, but the camp director did not immediately agree. After the crowd began getting more unruly, the director finally agreed to release Ueno if the crowd agreed he should still stand trial, no one attempted to break him out of the camp jail, the five representatives would discuss any further wants with the director, the protesting crowds would disperse and not reassemble, and the five would work to dispel and quiet the protesters. Ueno was then returned to the camp jail in the early evening. When the five representatives went to verify that Ueno was in the jail, the crowd again returned to protest. Instead of dispersing as asked, they broke into groups to try to find Tayama and kill him. When they were unable to find him in the hospital, they began searching all through the camp for Tayama as well as Tokie Slocum and Togo Tanaka, two other suspected collaborators. When they were unable to find any of them, the searchers began returning toward the jail. While the smaller search parties were searching the camp, the camp director had been trying to negotiate with the five representatives. This appeared to work initially, but the crowd gradually became more angry and started throwing bottles and rocks at the soldiers. The military police responded with tear gas to disperse them. As people ran to avoid the tear gas, some in the crowd pushed a driverless truck toward the jail. At that moment, the military police fired into the crowd, killing a 17-year-old boy instantly. A 21-year-old man who was shot in the abdomen died a few days later. At least nine to ten other prisoners were wounded, and a military police corporal was wounded by a ricocheting bullet. That night, some inmates continued attacking suspected collaborators and meeting in small groups while avoiding military police patrols. Over the next several days, internees marked as suspected collaborators were quietly removed from the camp with their families in order to protect them from being beaten or killed by the protesters. ### 442nd Infantry Regiment The 442nd Infantry Regiment (United States) was most well known for being an infantry regiment almost entirely made up of Japanese Americans. Almost all of these young men had family members trapped inside internment camps in the western states while they were fighting for the U.S. ## Closure The WRA closed Manzanar when the final internee left at 11:00 a.m. on November 21, 1945. It was the sixth camp to be closed. Although the Japanese Americans had been brought to the Owens Valley by the United States Government, they had to leave the camp and travel to their next destinations on their own. The WRA gave each person \$25 (\$ today), one-way train or bus fare, and meals to those who had less than \$600 (\$ today). While many left the camp voluntarily, a significant number refused to leave because they had no place to go after having lost everything when they were forcibly uprooted and removed from their homes. As such, they had to be forcibly removed once again, this time from Manzanar. Indeed, those who refused to leave were generally removed from their barracks, sometimes by force, even if they had no place to go. Between 135 and 146 Japanese Americans died at Manzanar. Fifteen were buried there, but only five graves remain, as most were reburied elsewhere by their families. The Manzanar cemetery site is marked by a monument that was built by stonemason Ryozo Kado in 1943. An inscription in Japanese on the front (east side) of the monument reads 慰霊塔 ('Soul Consoling Tower': ireitō=Mandarin: wèi-líng-tǎ ‘consoling-soul monument’ ). The inscription on the back (west side) reads "Erected by the Manzanar Japanese" on the left-hand column, and "August 1943" on the right-hand column. After the camp was closed, the site eventually returned to its original state. Within a couple of years, all the structures had been removed, with the exception of the two sentry posts at the entrance, the cemetery monument, and the former Manzanar High School auditorium, which was purchased by the County of Inyo. The County leased the auditorium to the Independence Veterans of Foreign Wars, who used it as a meeting facility and community theater until 1951. After that, the building was used as a maintenance facility by the Inyo County Road Department. The site also retained numerous building foundations, portions of the water and sewer systems, the outline of the road grid, some landscaping, and much more. Despite four years of use, the site also retains evidence of the ranches and of the town of Manzanar, as well as artifacts from the days of the Owens Valley Paiute settlement. ## Preservation and remembrance During the war, the War Relocation Authority hired photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange to document through pictures the Japanese-Americans impacted by the forced relocation, including Manzanar. Togo Tanaka and Joe Masaoka were hired by anthropologist Robert Redfield as documentary historians for the camp on behalf of the WRA. ### Manzanar Pilgrimage On December 21, 1969, about 150 people departed Los Angeles by car and bus, headed for Manzanar. It was the first official annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, though two ministers—the Reverend Sentoku Mayeda and the Reverend Shoichi Wakahiro—had been making annual pilgrimages to Manzanar since the camp closed in 1945. The non-profit Manzanar Committee, formerly led by Sue Kunitomi Embrey, has sponsored the Pilgrimage since 1969. The event is held annually on the last Saturday of April with hundreds of visitors of all ages and backgrounds, including former inmates, gathering at the Manzanar cemetery to remember the incarceration. The hope is that participants can learn about it and help ensure that what is generally accepted to be a tragic chapter in American history is neither forgotten nor repeated. The program traditionally consists of speakers, cultural performances, an interfaith service to memorialize those who died at Manzanar, and Ondo dancing. In 1997, the Manzanar At Dusk program became a part of the Pilgrimage. The program attracts local area residents, as well as descendants of Manzanar's ranch days and the town of Manzanar. Through small-group discussions, the event gives participants the opportunity to hear directly from those who had been there and to talk about the relevance of what had happened at Manzanar to their own lives. Since the September 11 attacks, American Muslims have participated in the Pilgrimage to promote and increase awareness of civil rights protections in the wake of widespread suspicions harbored against them post-9/11. A group of 150 Muslims visited in 2017, in part to compare treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II with how Muslims are treated following the 9/11 attacks. Over 2,000 people visited the site on April 27, 2019, for the 50th anniversary of the first pilgrimage, including a number of Muslim speakers, and a group of Muslims held afternoon prayers at the monument. ### Designations The Manzanar Committee's efforts resulted in the State of California naming Manzanar as California Historical Landmark \#850 in 1972, with an historical marker being placed at the sentry post on April 14, 1973. Manzanar, which had been historically owned by the City of Los Angeles, was registered as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1976. The Manzanar Committee also spearheaded efforts for Manzanar to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and in February 1985, Manzanar was designated a National Historic Landmark. Embrey and the committee, along with California representative Mel Levine, led the effort to have Manzanar designated a National Historic Site, and on March 3, 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed House Resolution 543 into law. This act of Congress established the Manzanar National Historic Site "to provide for the protection and interpretation of the historical, cultural, and natural resources associated with the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II." Five years later, the National Park Service acquired 814 acres (329 ha) of land at Manzanar from the City of Los Angeles. It was the first of the camps to be designated as a National Historical Site. After Congress named Manzanar a National Historic Site and gave the National Park Service the job of restoring the site in 1992, protests against its creation emerged. Letters were sent to the National Park Service included statements that Manzanar should be portrayed as a guest housing center, with others stating that calling the site a concentration camp is "treason", threatening dismissal campaigns against National Park Service employees and other related individuals, threatening to destroy buildings, and objecting to the use of the phrase "concentration camp" on signage at the site. The California State historical marker was hacked and stained, with the first "C" of "concentration camp" ground off. A man describing himself as a World War II veteran stated that he had driven 200 miles to urinate on the marker. ## Monument facilities and setting The site features a visitor center with a gift shop, housed in the historically restored Manzanar High School Auditorium with a reconstructed stage proscenium. The auditorium and the two sentry posts at the entrance are the only original structures from the time the camp was operating during World War II. Permanent exhibits tell the stories of the internee transportation to Manzanar, the Owens Valley Paiute, the ranchers, the town of Manzanar, the role that water played in shaping the history of the Owens Valley, and one that plays a video of Ronald Reagan signing the Civil Liberties Act. An "interpretive center" helps visitors gain an understanding of some of the internees' experiences. The exhibits in the center are constructed with materials that would have been used—or are similar to those used—when the camp was in operation. Details of camp experiences are from all ten of the relocation centers. A driving tour with 27 points of interest takes visitors around the site. A mess hall, salvaged from a closing military facility, was added to the site in 2002. The replica guard tower was built in 2005. The Manzanar cemetery, where some of the internees who died at the camp were buried, also contains the memorial obelisk, which was built by masons in the camp in August 1943. All of the remains have been removed to other locations. The site features restored sentry posts at the camp entrance, a replica of a camp guard tower built in 2005, a self-guided tour road, and wayside exhibits. Staff offer guided tours and other educational programs, including a Junior Ranger educational program for children between four and fifteen years of age. ### Reconstruction Under most circumstances, the National Park Service discourages the reconstruction of structures and artifacts that are no longer extant, but allows for exceptions when "there is no alternative that would accomplish the park's interpretive mission, there is sufficient data to enable an accurate reconstruction," and "the reconstruction occurs on the original location." On the basis that these criteria were met, and after extensive discussion with the Japanese-American community, the NPS decided to proceed with a reconstruction of some elements of the original site alongside preservation of those remnants that survive. The National Park Service is reconstructing one of the 36 residential blocks as a demonstration block (Block 14, adjacent to and west of the Visitor Center). One barrack appears as it would have when Japanese Americans first arrived at Manzanar in 1942, while another has been reconstructed to represent barracks life in 1945. Exhibits in these barracks opened on April 16, 2015. A restored World War II mess hall, moved to the site from Bishop Airport in 2002, was opened to visitors in late 2010. The Manzanar National Historic Site also unveiled its virtual museum on May 17, 2010. National Park Service staff have continued to uncover artifacts from throughout Manzanar's history, the result of archaeological digs that have also excavated several of the gardens designed and built there, including the noted Merritt Park (also known as Pleasure Park). In progress is a classroom exhibit that will be housed in the Block 9 barracks and an historic replica of the Block 9 women's latrine (opened in October 2016, but with no interpretive exhibit materials at this time). ## Reception of and discussion regarding Manzanar The Manzanar site had 1,275,195 people visit from 2000 through December 2016. The National Park Service's interpretation of events and experiences has been described as both "[willing] to memorialize a shameful, unconstitutional policy" and "providing a shortcut around the unjust suffering and often insurmountable adversity imposed by the internment". Congressman Mel Levine said the site should "serve as a reminder of the grievous errors and inhumane policies we pursued domestically during World War II and a reminder that we must never again allow such actions to occur in this country." Academics have criticized those who initiated and implemented the WRA relocation policy and members of the JACL for supporting the WRA policies. They have also pointed out that the majority of accounts of the relocation published within the first few decades following the closure of the camps have been from the perspective of the WRA and the JACL. ### Terminology Since the end of World War II, there has been debate over the terminology used to refer to Manzanar and the other camps in which Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents were incarcerated by the United States Government during the war. Manzanar has been referred to as a "War Relocation Authority center", "War Relocation Center", "relocation camp", "relocation center", "internment camp", "incarceration camp", "prison camp", and "concentration camp". Prior to the opening of an exhibit about the American camps at Ellis Island, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the National Park Service, which manages Ellis Island, expressed concern regarding the use of the term "concentration camp" in the exhibit. At a meeting held at the offices of the AJC in New York City, leaders representing Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans reached an understanding about the use of the term, and the Japanese American National Museum and the AJC issued a joint statement: > A concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned not because of any crimes they have committed, but simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term 'concentration camp' was first used at the turn of the [20th] century in the Spanish American and Boer Wars. During World War II, America's concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi Germany's. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical experiments and summary executions; some were extermination centers with gas chambers. ## In popular culture ### Films and television A made-for-television movie, Farewell to Manzanar aired on NBC in 1976. It was based on the 1973 memoir of the same name, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was incarcerated at Manzanar as a child, and her husband James D. Houston. In 2011, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announced that they had negotiated the rights to the movie, and that they would make it available for purchase on DVD. The feature film Come See the Paradise detailed the forced removal and incarceration at Manzanar of a Japanese American family from Los Angeles. In the movie The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi opens up to his student Daniel about the dual loss of his wife and son in childbirth at the Manzanar internment camp; the actor who played Mr. Miyagi, Pat Morita, was interned for two years at Manzanar with his parents. The short film, A Song for Manzanar, depicted the true story of a detainee and her struggle to remain hopeful for her son and stay in contact with her family in Hiroshima. In "Baku", Season 3, Episode 9 of Amazon Prime Video's The Man in the High Castle series, Frank Frink is executed for his resistance against the Japanese occupation by Kenpeitai inspector Kido. ### Music Folk/country musician Tom Russell wrote "Manzanar", a song about the Japanese American incarceration, that was released on his album Box of Visions (1993). Laurie Lewis covered the song on her album Seeing Things (1998), adding the koto to her performance. The Asian American jazz fusion band Hiroshima has a song entitled "Manzanar", inspired by the incarceration, on its album The Bridge (2003). Hiroshima's song "Living in America", on its album titled East (1990), contains the phrase "I still remember Manzanar". Fort Minor's song "Kenji", from the album The Rising Tied (2005), tells the true story of Mike Shinoda's family including their experiences during their imprisonment at Manzanar. The band Channel 3 recorded a song titled "Manzanar" about the incarceration. ### Other The 1994 novel, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, contains scenes and details relating to Japanese Americans from the state of Washington and their incarceration experiences at Manzanar. A 1999 film of the same name was based on the book. ## See also - California during World War II

Ming dynasty

Imperial dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644

The Ming dynasty (/mɪŋ/), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family—collectively called the Southern Ming—survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun, a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One eunuch, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. The rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances; the capture of the Emperor Yingzong of Ming during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade and connected and fortified the Great Wall into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and reviewing the enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures. Estimates for the late-Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million, but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from the official records or "donated" their lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples. Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. By the 16th century, however, the expansion of European trade – albeit restricted to islands near Guangzhou such as Macau – spread the Columbian Exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly productive maize and potatoes, which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced a massive influx of South American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng's initially successful reforms proved devastating when a slowdown in agriculture produced by the Little Ice Age. The value of silver rapidly increased because of a disruption in the supply of imported silver from Spainish and Portuguese sources, making it impossible for Chinese farmers to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed in 1644 as Li Zicheng's forces entered Beijing, albeit Li's forces were defeated shortly afterward by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies of the Qing dynasty. ## History ### Founding #### Revolt and rebel rivalry The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against the Han people that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation, and massive flooding of the Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. Consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351. The Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a penniless peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352; he soon gained a reputation after marrying the foster daughter of a rebel commander. In 1356, Zhu's rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, which he would later establish as the capital of the Ming dynasty. With the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of fire ships, Zhu's force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650,000-strong. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley and cementing his power in the south. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while a guest of Zhu, there was no one left who was remotely capable of contesting his march to the throne, and he made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward the Yuan capital Dadu (present-day Beijing) in 1368. The last Yuan emperor fled north to the upper capital Shangdu, and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming dynasty after razing the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground; the city was renamed Beiping in the same year. Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or "Vastly Martial", as his era name. #### Reign of the Hongwu Emperor Hongwu made an immediate effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km (30 mi) long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces and government halls. The History of Ming states that as early as 1364 Zhu Yuanzhang had begun drafting a new Confucian law code, the Da Ming Lü, which was completed by 1397 and repeated certain clauses found in the old Tang Code of 653. Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang dynasty (618–907). In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong executed upon suspicion of a conspiracy plot to overthrow him; after that Hongwu abolished the Chancellery and assumed this role as chief executive and emperor, a precedent mostly followed throughout the Ming period. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, a network of secret police drawn from his own palace guard. Some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule. The Hongwu emperor issued many edicts forbidding Mongol practices and proclaiming his intention to purify China of barbarian influence. However, he also sought to use the Yuan legacy to legitimize his authority in China and other areas ruled by the Yuan. He continued policies of the Yuan dynasty such as continued request for Korean concubines and eunuchs, Mongol-style hereditary military institutions, Mongol-style clothing and hats, promoting archery and horseback riding, and having large numbers of Mongols serve in the Ming military. Until the late 16th century Mongols still constituted one-in-three officers serving in capital forces like the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and other peoples such as Jurchens were also prominent. He frequently wrote to Mongol, Japanese, Korean, Jurchen, Tibetan, and Southwest frontier rulers offering advice on their governmental and dynastic policy, and insisted on leaders from these regions visiting the Ming capital for audiences. He resettled 100,000 Mongols into his territory, with many serving as guards in the capital. The emperor also strongly advertised the hospitality and role granted to Chinggisid nobles in his court. Zhu Yuanzhang insisted that he was not a rebel, and he attempted to justify his conquest of the other rebel warlords by claiming that he was a Yuan subject and had been divinely-appointed to restore order by crushing rebels. Most Chinese elites did not view the Yuan's Mongol ethnicity as grounds to resist or reject it. Zhu emphasised that he was not conquering territory from the Yuan dynasty but rather from the rebel warlords. He used this line of argument to attempt to persuade Yuan loyalists to join his cause. The Ming used the tribute they received from former Yuan vassals as proof that the Ming had taken over the Yuan's legitimacy. Tribute missions were regularly celebrated with music and dance in the Ming court. #### South-Western frontier Hui Muslim troops settled in Changde, Hunan, after serving the Ming in campaigns against aboriginal tribes. In 1381, the Ming dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali following the successful effort by Hui Muslim Ming armies to defeat Yuan-loyalist Mongol and Hui Muslim troops holding out in Yunnan province. The Hui troops under General Mu Ying, who was appointed Governor of Yunnan, were resettled in the region as part of a colonization effort. By the end of the 14th century, some 200,000 military colonists settled some 2,000,000 mu (350,000 acres) of land in what is now Yunnan and Guizhou. Roughly half a million more Chinese settlers came in later periods; these migrations caused a major shift in the ethnic make-up of the region, since formerly more than half of the population were non-Han peoples. Resentment over such massive changes in population and the resulting government presence and policies sparked more Miao and Yao revolts in 1464 to 1466, which were crushed by an army of 30,000 Ming troops (including 1,000 Mongols) joining the 160,000 local Guangxi. After the scholar and philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) suppressed another rebellion in the region, he advocated single, unitary administration of Chinese and indigenous ethnic groups in order to bring about sinification of the local peoples. #### Campaign in the North-East After the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty by the Ming dynasty in 1368, Manchuria remained under control of the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty based in Mongolia. Naghachu, a former Yuan official and a Uriankhai general of the Northern Yuan dynasty, won hegemony over the Mongol tribes in Manchuria (Liaoyang province of the former Yuan dynasty). He grew strong in the northeast, with forces large enough (numbering hundreds of thousands) to threaten invasion of the newly founded Ming dynasty in order to restore the Mongols to power in China. The Ming decided to defeat him instead of waiting for the Mongols to attack. In 1387 the Ming sent a military campaign to attack Naghachu, which concluded with the surrender of Naghachu and Ming conquest of Manchuria. The early Ming court could not, and did not, aspire to the control imposed upon the Jurchens in Manchuria by the Mongols, yet it created a norm of organization that would ultimately serve as the main instrument for the relations with peoples along the northeast frontiers. By the end of the Hongwu reign, the essentials of a policy toward the Jurchens had taken shape. Most of the inhabitants of Manchuria, except for the Wild Jurchens, were at peace with China. In 1409, under the Yongle Emperor, the Ming Dynasty established the Nurgan Regional Military Commission on the banks of the Amur River, and Yishiha, a eunuch of Haixi Jurchen origin, was ordered to lead an expedition to the mouth of the Amur to pacify the Wild Jurchens. After the death of Yongle Emperor, the Nurgan Regional Military Commission was abolished in 1435, and the Ming court ceased to have substantial activities there, although the guards continued to exist in Manchuria. Throughout its existence, the Ming established a total of 384 guards (衛, wei) and 24 battalions (所, suo) in Manchuria, but these were probably only nominal offices and did not necessarily imply political control. By the late Ming period, Ming's political presence in Manchuria has declined significantly. #### Relations with Tibet The Mingshi – the official history of the Ming dynasty compiled by the Qing dynasty in 1739 – states that the Ming established itinerant commanderies overseeing Tibetan administration while also renewing titles of ex-Yuan dynasty officials from Tibet and conferring new princely titles on leaders of Tibetan Buddhist sects. However, Turrell V. Wylie states that censorship in the Mingshi in favor of bolstering the Ming emperor's prestige and reputation at all costs obfuscates the nuanced history of Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming era. Modern scholars debate whether the Ming dynasty had sovereignty over Tibet. Some believe it was a relationship of loose suzerainty that was largely cut off when the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) persecuted Buddhism in favor of Daoism at court. Others argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship with Tibetan lamas is underrepresented in modern scholarship. Others note the Ming need for Central Asian horses and the need to maintain the tea-horse trade. The Ming sporadically sent armed forays into Tibet during the 14th century, which the Tibetans successfully resisted. Several scholars point out that unlike the preceding Mongols, the Ming dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet. The Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620) attempted to reestablish Sino-Tibetan relations in the wake of a Mongol-Tibetan alliance initiated in 1578, an alliance which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in their support for the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect. By the late 16th century, the Mongols proved to be successful armed protectors of the Yellow Hat Dalai Lama after their increasing presence in the Amdo region, culminating in the conquest of Tibet by Güshi Khan (1582–1655) in 1642, establishing the Khoshut Khanate. ### Reign of the Yongle Emperor #### Rise to power The Hongwu Emperor specified his grandson Zhu Yunwen as his successor, and he assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398–1402) after Hongwu's death in 1398. The most powerful of Hongwu's sons, Zhu Di, then the militarily mighty disagreed with this, and soon a political showdown erupted between him and his nephew Jianwen. After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di's associates, Zhu Di plotted a rebellion that sparked a three-year civil war. Under the pretext of rescuing the young Jianwen from corrupting officials, Zhu Di personally led forces in the revolt; the palace in Nanjing was burned to the ground, along with Jianwen himself, his wife, mother, and courtiers. Zhu Di assumed the throne as the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–24); his reign is universally viewed by scholars as a "second founding" of the Ming dynasty since he reversed many of his father's policies. #### New capital and foreign engagement Yongle demoted Nanjing to a secondary capital and in 1403 announced the new capital of China was to be at his power base in Beijing. Construction of a new city there lasted from 1407 to 1420, employing hundreds of thousands of workers daily. At the center was the political node of the Imperial City, and at the center of this was the Forbidden City, the palatial residence of the emperor and his family. By 1553, the Outer City was added to the south, which brought the overall size of Beijing to 6.5 by 7 kilometres (4 by 4+1⁄2 miles). Beginning in 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions. Among the kingdoms visited by Zheng He, Yongle proclaimed the Kingdom of Cochin to be its protectorate. The Chinese had sent diplomatic missions over land since the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) and engaged in private overseas trade, but these missions were unprecedented in grandeur and scale. To service seven different tributary voyages, the Nanjing shipyards constructed two thousand vessels from 1403 to 1419, including treasure ships measuring 112 to 134 m (367 to 440 ft) in length and 45 to 54 m (148 to 177 ft) in width. Yongle used woodblock printing to spread Chinese culture. He also used the military to expand China's borders. This included the brief occupation of Vietnam, from the initial invasion in 1406 until the Ming withdrawal in 1427 as a result of protracted guerrilla warfare led by Lê Lợi, the founder of the Vietnamese Lê dynasty. ### Tumu Crisis and the Ming Mongols The Oirat leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July 1449. The chief eunuch Wang Zhen encouraged the Zhengtong Emperor (r. 1435–49) to lead a force personally to face the Oirats after a recent Ming defeat; the emperor left the capital and put his half-brother Zhu Qiyu in charge of affairs as temporary regent. On 8 September, Esen routed Zhengtong's army, and Zhengtong was captured – an event known as the Tumu Crisis. The Oirats held the Zhengtong Emperor for ransom. However, this scheme was foiled once the emperor's younger brother assumed the throne under the era name Jingtai (r. 1449–57); the Oirats were also repelled once the Jingtai Emperor's confidant and defense minister Yu Qian (1398–1457) gained control of the Ming armed forces. Holding the Zhengtong Emperor in captivity was a useless bargaining chip for the Oirats as long as another sat on his throne, so they released him back into Ming China. The former emperor was placed under house arrest in the palace until the coup against the Jingtai Emperor in 1457 known as the "Wresting the Gate Incident". The former emperor retook the throne under the new era name Tianshun (r. 1457–64). Tianshun proved to be a troubled time and Mongol forces within the Ming military structure continued to be problematic. On 7 August 1461, the Chinese general Cao Qin and his Ming troops of Mongol descent staged a coup against the Tianshun Emperor out of fear of being next on his purge-list of those who aided him in the Wresting the Gate Incident. Cao's rebel force managed to set fire to the western and eastern gates of the Imperial City (doused by rain during the battle) and killed several leading ministers before his forces were finally cornered and he was forced to commit suicide. While the Yongle Emperor had staged five major offensives north of the Great Wall against the Mongols and the Oirats, the constant threat of Oirat incursions prompted the Ming authorities to fortify the Great Wall from the late 15th century to the 16th century; nevertheless, John Fairbank notes that "it proved to be a futile military gesture but vividly expressed China's siege mentality." Yet the Great Wall was not meant to be a purely defensive fortification; its towers functioned rather as a series of lit beacons and signalling stations to allow rapid warning to friendly units of advancing enemy troops. ### Decline #### Reign of the Wanli Emperor The financial drain of the Imjin War in Korea against the Japanese was one of the many problems – fiscal or other – facing Ming China during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620). In the beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1572–82) built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials. However, there was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the stability of these alliances; officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight. Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between the aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor. The Bozhou rebellion by the Chiefdom of Bozhou was going on in southwestern China at the same time as the Imjin War. #### Role of eunuchs The Hongwu Emperor forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs during the Yongle Emperor's reign (1402–1424) and afterwards managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. Yongle put 75 eunuchs in charge of foreign policy; they traveled frequently to vassal states including Annam, Mongolia, the Ryukyu Islands, and Tibet and less frequently to farther-flung places like Japan and Nepal. In the later 15th century, however, eunuch envoys generally only traveled to Korea. The eunuchs developed their own bureaucracy that was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service bureaucracy. Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as Wang Zhen, Wang Zhi, and Liu Jin, excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the 1590s when the Wanli Emperor increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them power to collect provincial taxes. The eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated the court of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the Donglin Society. He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs. His friends and family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published a historical work lambasting and belittling his political opponents. The instability at court came right as natural calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. The Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–44) had Wei dismissed from court, which led to Wei's suicide shortly after. The eunuchs built their own social structure, providing and gaining support to their birth clans. Instead of fathers promoting sons, it was a matter of uncles promoting nephews. The Heishanhui Society in Peking sponsored the temple that conducted rituals for worshiping the memory of Gang Tie, a powerful eunuch of the Yuan dynasty. The Temple became an influential base for highly placed eunuchs, and continued in a somewhat diminished role during the Qing dynasty. #### Economic breakdown and natural disasters During the last years of the Wanli era and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that was centered on a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver. The Portuguese first established trade with China in 1516. Following the Ming Emperor's decision to ban direct trade with Japan, Portuguese traders acted as an intermediary between China and Japan by buying Chinese silks from China and selling it to Japan for silver. After some initial hostilities gained consent from the Ming court in 1557 to settle Macau as their permanent trade base in China. Their role in providing silver was gradually surpassed by the Spanish, while even the Dutch challenged them for control of this trade. Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from New Spain and Peru across the Pacific through the Philippines towards China, in favor of shipping American-mined silver through Spanish ports. People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s a string of one thousand copper coins equaled an ounce of silver; by 1640 that sum could fetch half an ounce; and, by 1643 only one-third of an ounce. For peasants this meant economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and crop sales in copper. Historians have debated the validity of the theory that silver shortages caused the downfall of the Ming dynasty. Famines became common in northern China in the early 17th century because of unusually dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season – effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age. Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of the government to properly manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. The central government, starved of resources, could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic, the Great Plague of 1633–1644, spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing an unknown but large number of people. The deadliest earthquake of all time, the Shaanxi earthquake of 1556, occurred during the Jiajing Emperor's reign, killing approximately 830,000 people. ### Fall of the Ming #### Rise of the Manchus A Jurchen tribal leader named Nurhaci (r. 1616–26), starting with just a small tribe, rapidly gained control over all the Manchurian tribes. He offered to lead his armies to support Ming and Joseon armies against the Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s. Ming officials declined the offer, but granted him honorific titles. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority north of their border, he consolidated power by co-opting or conquering his Chinese, Jurchen, and Mongol neighbors. In 1616 he declared himself Khan and established the Later Jin dynasty as successor to the Jurchen Jin dynasty. In 1618 he demanded tribute from the Ming to redress "Seven Grievances." In 1636, Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji renamed his dynasty the "Great Qing" at Mukden, which had been made their capital in 1625. Hong Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi, declared the Chongde ("Revering Virtue") era, and changed the ethnic name of his people from "Jurchen" to "Manchu". In 1636, Banner Armies defeated Joseon during the Second Manchu invasion of Korea and forced Joseon to become a Qing tributary. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming dynasty. #### Rebellion, invasion, collapse A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there. In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on the terms that he return to service. The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li – Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647) – had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, with the establishment of the Xi dynasty, while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan. In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from the north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by Li Zicheng – now self-styled as the Prince of Shun – and deserted the capital without much of a fight. On 25 April 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng when the city gates were opened by rebel allies from within. During the turmoil, Chongzhen, the last Ming emperor, accompanied only by a eunuch servant, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden right outside the Forbidden City. Seizing opportunity, the Eight Banners crossed the Great Wall after the Ming border general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at Shanhai Pass. This occurred shortly after he learned about the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of alliance, he decided to side with the Manchus. The Eight Banners under the Manchu Prince Dorgon (1612–1650) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was destroyed at Shanhaiguan; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on the fourth of June. On 6 June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor ruler of China. After being forced out of Xi'an by the Qing, chased along the Han River to Wuchang, and finally along the northern border of Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645, thus ending the Shun dynasty. One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food. Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, the Ming were not yet totally destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However, there were several pretenders for the Ming throne, and their forces were divided. These scattered Ming remnants in southern China after 1644 were collectively designated by 19th-century historians as the Southern Ming. Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last Southern Ming emperor, Zhu Youlang, the Yongli Emperor, was captured and executed. Despite the Ming defeat, smaller loyalist movements continued until the proclamation of the Republic of China. ## Government ### Province, prefecture, subprefecture, county Described as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history" by Edwin O. Reischauer, John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig, the Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan dynasty, and the thirteen Ming provinces are the precursors of the modern provinces. Throughout the Song dynasty, the largest political division was the circuit (lu 路). However, after the Jurchen invasion in 1127, the Song court established four semi-autonomous regional command systems based on territorial and military units, with a detached service secretariat that would become the provincial administrations of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Copied on the Yuan model, the Ming provincial bureaucracy contained three commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below the level of the province (sheng 省) were prefectures (fu 府) operating under a prefect (zhifu 知府), followed by subprefectures (zhou 州) under a subprefect. The lowest unit was the county (xian 縣), overseen by a magistrate. Besides the provinces, there were also two large areas that belonged to no province, but were metropolitan areas (jing 京) attached to Nanjing and Beijing. ### Institutions and bureaus #### Institutional trends Departing from the main central administrative system generally known as the Three Departments and Six Ministries system, which was instituted by various dynasties since late Han (202 BCE – 220 CE), the Ming administration had only one department, the Secretariat, that controlled the six ministries. Following the execution of the Chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380, the Hongwu Emperor abolished the Secretariat, the Censorate, and the Chief Military Commission and personally took charge of the Six Ministries and the regional Five Military Commissions. Thus a whole level of administration was cut out and only partially rebuilt by subsequent rulers. The Grand Secretariat, at the beginning a secretarial institution that assisted the emperor with administrative paperwork, was instituted, but without employing grand counselors, or chancellors. The Hongwu Emperor sent his heir apparent to Shaanxi in 1391 to "tour and soothe" (xunfu) the region; in 1421 the Yongle Emperor commissioned 26 officials to travel the empire and uphold similar investigatory and patrimonial duties. By 1430 these xunfu assignments became institutionalized as "grand coordinators". Hence, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with investigating censors, later with censors-in-chief. By 1453, the grand coordinators were granted the title vice censor-in-chief or assistant censor-in-chief and were allowed direct access to the emperor. As in prior dynasties, the provincial administrations were monitored by a travelling inspector from the Censorate. Censors had the power to impeach officials on an irregular basis, unlike the senior officials who were to do so only in triennial evaluations of junior officials. Although decentralization of state power within the provinces occurred in the early Ming, the trend of central government officials delegated to the provinces as virtual provincial governors began in the 1420s. By the late Ming dynasty, there were central government officials delegated to two or more provinces as supreme commanders and viceroys, a system which reined in the power and influence of the military by the civil establishment. #### Grand Secretariat and Six Ministries Governmental institutions in China conformed to a similar pattern for some two thousand years, but each dynasty installed special offices and bureaus, reflecting its own particular interests. The Ming administration utilized Grand Secretaries to assist the emperor, handling paperwork under the reign of the Yongle Emperor and later appointed as top officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a top-ranking, non-functional civil service post, under the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–25). The Grand Secretariat drew its members from the Hanlin Academy and were considered part of the imperial authority, not the ministerial one (hence being at odds with both the emperor and ministers at times). The Secretariat operated as a coordinating agency, whereas the Six Ministries – Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Public Works – were direct administrative organs of the state: 1. The Ministry of Personnel was in charge of appointments, merit ratings, promotions, and demotions of officials, as well as granting of honorific titles. 2. The Ministry of Revenue was in charge of gathering census data, collecting taxes, and handling state revenues, while there were two offices of currency that were subordinate to it. 3. The Ministry of Rites was in charge of state ceremonies, rituals, and sacrifices; it also oversaw registers for Buddhist and Daoist priesthoods and even the reception of envoys from tributary states. 4. The Ministry of War was in charge of the appointments, promotions, and demotions of military officers, the maintenance of military installations, equipment, and weapons, as well as the courier system. 5. The Ministry of Justice was in charge of judicial and penal processes, but had no supervisory role over the Censorate or the Grand Court of Revision. 6. The Ministry of Public Works had charge of government construction projects, hiring of artisans and laborers for temporary service, manufacturing government equipment, the maintenance of roads and canals, standardization of weights and measures, and the gathering of resources from the countryside. #### Bureaus and offices for the imperial household The imperial household was staffed almost entirely by eunuchs and ladies with their own bureaus. Female servants were organized into the Bureau of Palace Attendance, Bureau of Ceremonies, Bureau of Apparel, Bureau of Foodstuffs, Bureau of the Bedchamber, Bureau of Handicrafts, and Office of Staff Surveillance. Starting in the 1420s, eunuchs began taking over these ladies' positions until only the Bureau of Apparel with its four subsidiary offices remained. Hongwu had his eunuchs organized into the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but as eunuch power at court increased, so did their administrative offices, with eventual twelve directorates, four offices, and eight bureaus. The dynasty had a vast imperial household, staffed with thousands of eunuchs, who were headed by the Directorate of Palace Attendants. The eunuchs were divided into different directorates in charge of staff surveillance, ceremonial rites, food, utensils, documents, stables, seals, apparel, and so on. The offices were in charge of providing fuel, music, paper, and baths. The bureaus were in charge of weapons, silverwork, laundering, headgear, bronze work, textile manufacture, wineries, and gardens. At times, the most influential eunuch in the Directorate of Ceremonial acted as a de facto dictator over the state. Although the imperial household was staffed mostly by eunuchs and palace ladies, there was a civil service office called the Seal Office, which cooperated with eunuch agencies in maintaining imperial seals, tallies, and stamps. There were also civil service offices to oversee the affairs of imperial princes. ### Personnel #### Scholar-officials The Hongwu emperor from 1373 to 1384 staffed his bureaus with officials gathered through recommendations only. After that the scholar-officials who populated the many ranks of bureaucracy were recruited through a rigorous examination system that was initially established by the Sui dynasty (581–618). Theoretically the system of exams allowed anyone to join the ranks of imperial officials (although it was frowned upon for merchants to join); in reality the time and funding needed to support the study in preparation for the exam generally limited participants to those already coming from the landholding class. However, the government did exact provincial quotas while drafting officials. This was an effort to curb monopolization of power by landholding gentry who came from the most prosperous regions, where education was the most advanced. The expansion of the printing industry since Song times enhanced the spread of knowledge and number of potential exam candidates throughout the provinces. For young schoolchildren there were printed multiplication tables and primers for elementary vocabulary; for adult examination candidates there were mass-produced, inexpensive volumes of Confucian classics and successful examination answers. As in earlier periods, the focus of the examination was classical Confucian texts, while the bulk of test material centered on the Four Books outlined by Zhu Xi in the 12th century. Ming era examinations were perhaps more difficult to pass since the 1487 requirement of completing the "eight-legged essay", a departure from basing essays off progressing literary trends. The exams increased in difficulty as the student progressed from the local level, and appropriate titles were accordingly awarded successful applicants. Officials were classified in nine hierarchic grades, each grade divided into two degrees, with ranging salaries (nominally paid in piculs of rice) according to their rank. While provincial graduates who were appointed to office were immediately assigned to low-ranking posts like the county graduates, those who passed the palace examination were awarded a jinshi ('presented scholar') degree and assured a high-level position. In 276 years of Ming rule and ninety palace examinations, the number of doctoral degrees granted by passing the palace examinations was 24,874. Ebrey states that "there were only two to four thousand of these jinshi at any given time, on the order of one out of 10,000 adult males." This was in comparison to the 100,000 shengyuan ('government students'), the lowest tier of graduates, by the 16th century.The maximum tenure in office was nine years, but every three years officials were graded on their performance by senior officials. If they were graded as superior then they were promoted, if graded adequate then they retained their ranks, and if graded inadequate they were demoted one rank. In extreme cases, officials would be dismissed or punished. Only capital officials of grade 4 and above were exempt from the scrutiny of recorded evaluation, although they were expected to confess any of their faults. There were over 4,000 school instructors in county and prefectural schools who were subject to evaluations every nine years. The Chief Instructor on the prefectural level was classified as equal to a second-grade county graduate. The Supervisorate of Imperial Instruction oversaw the education of the heir apparent to the throne; this office was headed by a Grand Supervisor of Instruction, who was ranked as first class of grade three. Historians debate whether the examination system expanded or contracted upward social mobility. On the one hand, the exams were graded without regard to a candidate's social background, and were theoretically open to everyone. In actual practice, the successful candidates had years of a very expensive, sophisticated tutoring of the sort that wealthy gentry families specialized in providing their talented sons. In practice, 90 percent of the population was ineligible due to lack of education, but the upper 10 percent had equal chances for moving to the top. To be successful young men had to have extensive, expensive training in classical Chinese, the use of Mandarin in spoken conversation, calligraphy, and had to master the intricate poetic requirements of the eight-legged essay. Not only did the traditional gentry dominated the system, they also learned that conservatism and resistance to new ideas was the path to success. For centuries critics had pointed out these problems, but the examination system only became more abstract and less relevant to the needs of China. The consensus of scholars is that the eight-legged essay can be blamed as a major cause of "China's cultural stagnation and economic backwardness." However Benjamin Ellman argues there were some positive features, since the essay form was capable of fostering "abstract thinking, persuasiveness, and prosodic form" and that its elaborate structure discouraged a wandering, unfocused narrative". #### Lesser functionaries Scholar-officials who entered civil service through examinations acted as executive officials to a much larger body of non-ranked personnel called lesser functionaries. They outnumbered officials by four to one; Charles Hucker estimates that they were perhaps as many as 100,000 throughout the empire. These lesser functionaries performed clerical and technical tasks for government agencies. Yet they should not be confused with lowly lictors, runners, and bearers; lesser functionaries were given periodic merit evaluations like officials and after nine years of service might be accepted into a low civil service rank. The one great advantage of the lesser functionaries over officials was that officials were periodically rotated and assigned to different regional posts and had to rely on the good service and cooperation of the local lesser functionaries. #### Eunuchs, princes, and generals Eunuchs gained unprecedented power over state affairs during the Ming dynasty. One of the most effective means of control was the secret service stationed in what was called the Eastern Depot at the beginning of the dynasty, later the Western Depot. This secret service was overseen by the Directorate of Ceremonial, hence this state organ's often totalitarian affiliation. Eunuchs had ranks that were equivalent to civil service ranks, only theirs had four grades instead of nine. Descendants of the first Ming emperor were made princes and given (typically nominal) military commands, annual stipends, and large estates. The title used was "king" (王, wáng) but – unlike the princes in the Han and Jin dynasties – these estates were not feudatories, the princes did not serve any administrative function, and they partook in military affairs only during the reigns of the first two emperors. The rebellion of the Prince of Yan was justified in part as upholding the rights of the princes, but once the Yongle Emperor was enthroned, he continued his nephew's policy of disarming his brothers and moved their fiefs away from the militarized northern border. Although princes served no organ of state administration, the princes, consorts of the imperial princesses, and ennobled relatives did staff the Imperial Clan Court, which supervised the imperial genealogy. Like scholar-officials, military generals were ranked in a hierarchic grading system and were given merit evaluations every five years (as opposed to three years for officials). However, military officers had less prestige than officials. This was due to their hereditary service (instead of solely merit-based) and Confucian values that dictated those who chose the profession of violence (wu) over the cultured pursuits of knowledge (wen). Although seen as less prestigious, military officers were not excluded from taking civil service examinations, and after 1478 the military even held their own examinations to test military skills. In addition to taking over the established bureaucratic structure from the Yuan period, the Ming emperors established the new post of the travelling military inspector. In the early half of the dynasty, men of noble lineage dominated the higher ranks of military office; this trend was reversed during the latter half of the dynasty as men from more humble origins eventually displaced them. ## Society and culture ### Literature and arts Literature, painting, poetry, music, and Chinese opera of various types flourished during the Ming dynasty, especially in the economically prosperous lower Yangzi valley. Although short fiction had been popular as far back as the Tang dynasty (618–907), and the works of contemporaneous authors such as Xu Guangqi, Xu Xiake, and Song Yingxing were often technical and encyclopedic, the most striking literary development was the vernacular novel. While the gentry elite were educated enough to fully comprehend the language of Classical Chinese, those with rudimentary education – such as women in educated families, merchants, and shop clerks – became a large potential audience for literature and performing arts that employed Vernacular Chinese. Literati scholars edited or developed major Chinese novels into mature form in this period, such as Water Margin and Journey to the West. Jin Ping Mei, published in 1610, although incorporating earlier material, marks the trend toward independent composition and concern with psychology. In the later years of the dynasty, Feng Menglong and Ling Mengchu innovated with vernacular short fiction. Theater scripts were equally imaginative. The most famous, The Peony Pavilion, was written by Tang Xianzu (1550–1616), with its first performance at the Pavilion of Prince Teng in 1598. Informal essay and travel writing was another highlight. Xu Xiake (1587–1641), a travel literature author, published his Travel Diaries in 404,000 written characters, with information on everything from local geography to mineralogy. The first reference to the publishing of private newspapers in Beijing was in 1582; by 1638 the Peking Gazette switched from using woodblock print to movable type printing. The new literary field of the moral guide to business ethics was developed during the late Ming period, for the readership of the merchant class. In contrast to Xu Xiake, who focused on technical aspects in his travel literature, the Chinese poet and official Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) used travel literature to express his desires for individualism as well as autonomy from and frustration with Confucian court politics. Yuan desired to free himself from the ethical compromises that were inseparable from the career of a scholar-official. This anti-official sentiment in Yuan's travel literature and poetry was actually following in the tradition of the Song dynasty poet and official Su Shi (1037–1101). Yuan Hongdao and his two brothers, Yuan Zongdao (1560–1600) and Yuan Zhongdao (1570–1623), were the founders of the Gong'an School of letters. This highly individualistic school of poetry and prose was criticized by the Confucian establishment for its association with intense sensual lyricism, which was also apparent in Ming vernacular novels such as the Jin Ping Mei. Yet even gentry and scholar-officials were affected by the new popular romantic literature, seeking courtesans as soulmates to re-enact the heroic love stories that arranged marriages often could not provide or accommodate. Famous painters included Ni Zan and Dong Qichang, as well as the Four Masters of the Ming dynasty, Shen Zhou, Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming, and Qiu Ying. They drew upon the techniques, styles, and complexity in painting achieved by their Song and Yuan predecessors, but added techniques and styles. Well-known Ming artists could make a living simply by painting due to the high prices they demanded for their artworks and the great demand by the highly cultured community to collect precious works of art. The artist Qiu Ying was once paid 2.8 kg (100 oz) of silver to paint a long handscroll for the eightieth birthday celebration of the mother of a wealthy patron. Renowned artists often gathered an entourage of followers, some who were amateurs who painted while pursuing an official career and others who were full-time painters. The period was also renowned for ceramics and porcelains. The major production center for porcelain was the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, most famous in the period for blue and white porcelain, but also producing other styles. The Dehua porcelain factories in Fujian catered to European tastes by creating Chinese export porcelain by the late 16th century. Individual potters also became known, such as He Chaozong, who became famous in the early 17th century for his style of white porcelain sculpture. In The Ceramic Trade in Asia, Chuimei Ho estimates that about 16% of late Ming era Chinese ceramic exports were sent to Europe, while the rest were destined for Japan and South East Asia. Carved designs in lacquerware and designs glazed onto porcelain wares displayed intricate scenes similar in complexity to those in painting. These items could be found in the homes of the wealthy, alongside embroidered silks and wares in jade, ivory, and cloisonné. The houses of the rich were also furnished with rosewood furniture and feathery latticework. The writing materials in a scholar's private study, including elaborately carved brush holders made of stone or wood, were designed and arranged ritually to give an aesthetic appeal. Connoisseurship in the late Ming period centered on these items of refined artistic taste, which provided work for art dealers and even underground scammers who themselves made imitations and false attributions. The Jesuit Matteo Ricci while staying in Nanjing wrote that Chinese scam artists were ingenious at making forgeries and huge profits. However, there were guides to help the wary new connoisseur; Liu Tong (died 1637) wrote a book printed in 1635 that told his readers how to spot fake and authentic pieces of art. He revealed that a Xuande era (1426–1435) bronze work could be authenticated by judging its sheen; porcelain wares from the Yongle era (1402–1424) could be judged authentic by their thickness. ### Religion The dominant religious beliefs during the Ming dynasty were the various forms of Chinese folk religion and the Three Teachings – Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The Yuan-supported Tibetan lamas fell from favor, and the early Ming emperors particularly favored Taoism, granting its practitioners many positions in the state's ritual offices. The Hongwu Emperor curtailed the cosmopolitan culture of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and the prolific Prince of Ning Zhu Quan even composed one encyclopedia attacking Buddhism as a foreign "mourning cult", deleterious to the state, and another encyclopedia that subsequently joined the Taoist canon. The Yongle emperor and later emperors strongly patronised Tibetan Buddhism by supporting construction, printing of sutras, ceremonies etc., to seek legitimacy among foreign audiences. Yongle tried to portray himself as a Buddhist ideal king, a cakravartin. There is evidence that this portrayal was successful in persuading foreign audiences. Islam was also well-established throughout China, with a history said to have begun with Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas during the Tang dynasty and strong official support during the Yuan. Although the Ming sharply curtailed this support, there were still several prominent Muslim figures early on, including the Yongle Emperor's powerful eunuch Zheng He. The Hongwu Emperor's generals Chang Yuqun, Lan Yu, Ding Dexing, and Mu Ying have also been identified as Muslim by Hui scholars, though this is doubted by non-Muslim sources. Regardless, the presence of Muslims in the armies that drove the Mongols northwards caused a gradual shift in the Chinese perception of Muslims, transitioning from "foreigners" to "familiar strangers". Mongol and Central Asian Semu Muslim women and men were required by Ming Code to marry Han Chinese after the first Ming Emperor Hongwu passed the law in Article 122. The Hongwu Emperor wrote a a 100 character praise of Islam and the prophet Muhammad. The Ming Emperors strongly sponsored the construction of mosques and granted generous liberties for the practice of Islam. The advent of the Ming was initially devastating to Christianity: in his first year, the Hongwu Emperor declared the eighty-year-old Franciscan missions among the Yuan heterodox and illegal. The centuries-old Church of the East in China also disappeared. During the later Ming a new wave of Christian missionaries arrived – particularly Jesuits – who employed new western science and technology in their arguments for conversion. They were educated in Chinese language and culture at St. Paul's College on Macau after its founding in 1579. The most influential was Matteo Ricci, whose "Map of the Myriad Countries of the World" upended traditional geography throughout East Asia, and whose work with the convert Xu Guangqi led to the first Chinese translation of Euclid's Elements in 1607. The discovery of a Xi'an Stele at Xi'an in 1625 also permitted Christianity to be treated as an old and established faith, rather than as a new and dangerous cult. However, there were strong disagreements about the extent to which converts could continue to perform rituals to the emperor, Confucius, or their ancestors: Ricci had been very accommodating and an attempt by his successors to backtrack from this policy led to the Nanjing Incident of 1616, which exiled four Jesuits to Macau and forced the others out of public life for six years. A series of spectacular failures by the Chinese astronomers – including missing an eclipse easily computed by Xu Guangqi and Sabatino de Ursis – and a return by the Jesuits to presenting themselves as educated scholars in the Confucian mold restored their fortunes. However, by the end of the Ming the Dominicans had begun the Chinese Rites controversy in Rome that would eventually lead to a full ban of Christianity under the Qing dynasty. During his mission, Ricci was also contacted in Beijing by one of the approximately 5,000 Kaifeng Jews and introduced them and their long history in China to Europe. However, the 1642 flood caused by Kaifeng's Ming governor devastated the community, which lost five of its twelve families, its synagogue, and most of its Torah. ### Philosophy #### Wang Yangming's Confucianism During the Ming dynasty, the Neo-Confucian doctrines of the Song scholar Zhu Xi were embraced by the court and the Chinese literati at large, although the direct line of his school was destroyed by the Yongle Emperor's extermination of the ten degrees of kinship of Fang Xiaoru in 1402. The Ming scholar most influential upon subsequent generations, however, was Wang Yangming (1472–1529), whose teachings were attacked in his own time for their similarity to Chan Buddhism. Building upon Zhu Xi's concept of the "extension of knowledge" (理學 or 格物致知), gaining understanding through careful and rational investigation of things and events, Wang argued that universal concepts would appear in the minds of anyone. Therefore, he claimed that anyone – no matter their pedigree or education – could become as wise as Confucius and Mencius had been and that their writings were not sources of truth but merely guides that might have flaws when carefully examined. A peasant with a great deal of experience and intelligence would then be wiser than an official who had memorized the Classics but not experienced the real world. #### Conservative reaction Other scholar-bureaucrats were wary of Wang's heterodoxy, the increasing number of his disciples while he was still in office, and his overall socially rebellious message. To curb his influence, he was often sent out to deal with military affairs and rebellions far away from the capital. Yet his ideas penetrated mainstream Chinese thought and spurred new interest in Taoism and Buddhism. Furthermore, people began to question the validity of the social hierarchy and the idea that the scholar should be above the farmer. Wang Yangming's disciple and salt-mine worker Wang Gen gave lectures to commoners about pursuing education to improve their lives, while his follower He Xinyin (何心隱) challenged the elevation and emphasis of the family in Chinese society. His contemporary Li Zhi even taught that women were the intellectual equals of men and should be given a better education; both Li and He eventually died in prison, jailed on charges of spreading "dangerous ideas". Yet these "dangerous ideas" of educating women had long been embraced by some mothers and by courtesans who were as literate and skillful in calligraphy, painting, and poetry as their male guests. The liberal views of Wang Yangming were opposed by the Censorate and by the Donglin Academy, re-established in 1604. These conservatives wanted a revival of orthodox Confucian ethics. Conservatives such as Gu Xiancheng (1550–1612) argued against Wang's idea of innate moral knowledge, stating that this was simply a legitimization for unscrupulous behavior such as greedy pursuits and personal gain. These two strands of Confucian thought, hardened by Chinese scholars' notions of obligation towards their mentors, developed into pervasive factionalism among the ministers of state, who used any opportunity to impeach members of the other faction from court. ### Urban and rural life Wang Gen was able to give philosophical lectures to many commoners from different regions because – following the trend already apparent in the Song dynasty – communities in Ming society were becoming less isolated as the distance between market towns was shrinking. Schools, descent groups, religious associations, and other local voluntary organizations were increasing in number and allowing more contact between educated men and local villagers. Jonathan Spence writes that the distinction between what was town and country was blurred in Ming China, since suburban areas with farms were located just outside and in some cases within the walls of a city. Not only was the blurring of town and country evident, but also of socioeconomic class in the traditional four occupations (Shì nóng gōng shāng, 士農工商), since artisans sometimes worked on farms in peak periods, and farmers often traveled into the city to find work during times of dearth. A variety of occupations could be chosen or inherited from a father's line of work. This would include – but was not limited to – coffin makers, ironworkers and blacksmiths, tailors, cooks and noodle-makers, retail merchants, tavern, teahouse, or winehouse managers, shoemakers, seal cutters, pawnshop owners, brothel heads, and merchant bankers engaging in a proto-banking system involving notes of exchange. Virtually every town had a brothel where female and male prostitutes could be had. Male catamites fetched a higher price than female concubines since pederasty with a teenage boy was seen as a mark of elite status, regardless of sodomy being repugnant to sexual norms. Public bathing became much more common than in earlier periods. Urban shops and retailers sold a variety of goods such as special paper money to burn at ancestral sacrifices, specialized luxury goods, headgear, fine cloth, teas, and others. Smaller communities and townships too poor or scattered to support shops and artisans obtained their goods from periodic market fairs and traveling peddlers. A small township also provided a place for simple schooling, news and gossip, matchmaking, religious festivals, traveling theater groups, tax collection, and bases of famine relief distribution. Farming villagers in the north spent their days harvesting crops like wheat and millet, while farmers south of the Huai River engaged in intensive rice cultivation and had lakes and ponds where ducks and fish could be raised. The cultivation of mulberry trees for silkworms and tea bushes could be found mostly south of the Yangzi River; even further south sugarcane and citrus were grown as basic crops. Some people in the mountainous southwest made a living by selling lumber from hard bamboo. Besides cutting down trees to sell wood, the poor also made a living by turning wood into charcoal, and by burning oyster shells to make lime and fired pots, and weaving mats and baskets. In the north traveling by horse and carriage was most common, while in the south the myriad of rivers, canals, and lakes provided cheap and easy water transport. Although the south had the characteristic of the wealthy landlord and tenant farmers, there were on average many more owner-cultivators north of the Huai River due to harsher climate, living not far above subsistence level. Early Ming dynasty saw the strictest sumptuary laws in Chinese history. It was illegal for commoners to wear fine silk or dress in bright red, dark green or yellow colors; nor could they wear boots or guan hats. Women could not use ornaments made from gold, jade, pearl or emerald. Merchants and their families were further banned from using silk. However, these laws were no longer enforced from the middle Ming period onwards. ## Science and technology After the flourishing of science and technology in the Song dynasty, the Ming dynasty perhaps saw fewer advancements in science and technology compared to the pace of discovery in the Western world. In fact, key advances in Chinese science in the late Ming were spurred by contact with Europe. In 1626 Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote the first Chinese treatise on the telescope, the Yuanjingshuo (Far Seeing Optic Glass); in 1634 the Chongzhen Emperor acquired the telescope of the late Johann Schreck (1576–1630). The heliocentric model of the solar system was rejected by the Catholic missionaries in China, but Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei's ideas slowly trickled into China starting with the Polish Jesuit Michael Boym (1612–1659) in 1627, Adam Schall von Bell's treatise in 1640, and finally Joseph Edkins, Alex Wylie, and John Fryer in the 19th century. Catholic Jesuits in China would promote Copernican theory at court, yet at the same time embrace the Ptolemaic system in their writing; it was not until 1865 that Catholic missionaries in China sponsored the heliocentric model as their Protestant peers did. Although Shen Kuo (1031–1095) and Guo Shoujing (1231–1316) had laid the basis for trigonometry in China, another important work in Chinese trigonometry would not be published again until 1607 with the efforts of Xu Guangqi and Matteo Ricci. Ironically, some inventions which had their origins in ancient China were reintroduced to China from Europe during the late Ming; for example, the field mill. The Chinese calendar was in need of reform since it inadequately measured the solar year at 365 1⁄4 days, giving an error of 10 min and 14 sec a year or roughly a full day every 128 years. Although the Ming had adopted Guo Shoujing's Shoushi calendar of 1281, which was just as accurate as the Gregorian Calendar, the Ming Directorate of Astronomy failed to periodically readjust it; this was perhaps due to their lack of expertise since their offices had become hereditary in the Ming and the Statutes of the Ming prohibited private involvement in astronomy. A sixth-generation descendant of the Hongxi Emperor, the "Prince" Zhu Zaiyu (1536–1611), submitted a proposal to fix the calendar in 1595, but the ultra-conservative astronomical commission rejected it. This was the same Zhu Zaiyu who discovered the system of tuning known as equal temperament, a discovery made simultaneously by Simon Stevin (1548–1620) in Europe. In addition to publishing his works on music, he was able to publish his findings on the calendar in 1597. A year earlier, the memorial of Xing Yunlu suggesting a calendar improvement was rejected by the Supervisor of the Astronomical Bureau due to the law banning private practice of astronomy; Xing would later serve with Xu Guangqi in reforming the calendar (Chinese: 崇禎暦書) in 1629 according to Western standards. When the Ming founder Hongwu came upon the mechanical devices housed in the Yuan dynasty's palace at Khanbaliq – such as fountains with balls dancing on their jets, self-operating tiger automata, dragon-headed devices that spouted mists of perfume, and mechanical clocks in the tradition of Yi Xing (683–727) and Su Song (1020–1101) – he associated all of them with the decadence of Mongol rule and had them destroyed. This was described in full length by the Divisional Director of the Ministry of Works, Xiao Xun, who also carefully preserved details on the architecture and layout of the Yuan dynasty palace. Later, European Jesuits such as Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault would briefly mention indigenous Chinese clockworks that featured drive wheels. However, both Ricci and Trigault were quick to point out that 16th-century European clockworks were far more advanced than the common time keeping devices in China, which they listed as water clocks, incense clocks, and "other instruments ... with wheels rotated by sand as if by water" (Chinese: 沙漏). Chinese records – namely the Yuan Shi – describe the 'five-wheeled sand clock', a mechanism pioneered by Zhan Xiyuan (fl. 1360–80) which featured the scoop wheel of Su Song's earlier astronomical clock and a stationary dial face over which a pointer circulated, similar to European models of the time. This sand-driven wheel clock was improved upon by Zhou Shuxue (fl. 1530–58) who added a fourth large gear wheel, changed gear ratios, and widened the orifice for collecting sand grains since he criticized the earlier model for clogging up too often. The Chinese were intrigued with European technology, but so were visiting Europeans of Chinese technology. In 1584, Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) featured in his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum the peculiar Chinese innovation of mounting masts and sails onto carriages, just like Chinese ships. Gonzales de Mendoza also mentioned this a year later – noting even the designs of them on Chinese silken robes – while Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594) featured them in his atlas, John Milton (1608–1674) in one of his famous poems, and Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801) in the writings of his travel diary in China. The encyclopedist Song Yingxing (1587–1666) documented a wide array of technologies, metallurgic and industrial processes in his Tiangong Kaiwu encyclopedia of 1637. This includes mechanical and hydraulic powered devices for agriculture and irrigation, nautical technology such as vessel types and snorkeling gear for pearl divers, the annual processes of sericulture and weaving with the loom, metallurgic processes such as the crucible technique and quenching, manufacturing processes such as for roasting iron pyrite in converting sulphide to oxide in sulfur used in gunpowder compositions – illustrating how ore was piled up with coal briquettes in an earthen furnace with a still-head that sent over sulfur as vapor that would solidify and crystallize – and the use of gunpowder weapons such as a naval mine ignited by use of a rip-cord and steel flint wheel. Focusing on agriculture in his Nongzheng Quanshu, the agronomist Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) took an interest in irrigation, fertilizers, famine relief, economic and textile crops, and empirical observation of the elements that gave insight into early understandings of chemistry. There were many advances and new designs in gunpowder weapons during the beginning of the dynasty, but by the mid to late Ming the Chinese began to frequently employ European-style artillery and firearms. The Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Bowen sometime before the latter's death on 16 May 1375 (with a preface added by Jiao in 1412), featured many types of cutting-edge gunpowder weaponry for the time. This includes hollow, gunpowder-filled exploding cannonballs, land mines that used a complex trigger mechanism of falling weights, pins, and a steel wheellock to ignite the train of fuses, naval mines, fin-mounted winged rockets for aerodynamic control, multistage rockets propelled by booster rockets before igniting a swarm of smaller rockets issuing forth from the end of the missile (shaped like a dragon's head), and hand cannons that had up to ten barrels. Li Shizhen (1518–1593) – one of the most renowned pharmacologists and physicians in Chinese history – belonged to the late Ming period. His Bencao Gangmu is a medical text with 1,892 entries, each entry with its own name called a gang. The mu in the title refers to the synonyms of each name. Inoculation, although it can be traced to earlier Chinese folk medicine, was detailed in Chinese texts by the sixteenth century. Throughout the Ming dynasty, around fifty texts were published on the treatment of smallpox. In regards to oral hygiene, the ancient Egyptians had a primitive toothbrush of a twig frayed at the end, but the Chinese were the first to invent the modern bristle toothbrush in 1498, although it used stiff pig hair. ## Population Sinologist historians debate the population figures for each era in the Ming dynasty. The historian Timothy Brook notes that the Ming government census figures are dubious since fiscal obligations prompted many families to underreport the number of people in their households and many county officials to underreport the number of households in their jurisdiction. Children were often underreported, especially female children, as shown by skewed population statistics throughout the Ming. Even adult women were underreported; for example, the Daming Prefecture in North Zhili reported a population of 378,167 males and 226,982 females in 1502. The government attempted to revise the census figures using estimates of the expected average number of people in each household, but this did not solve the widespread problem of tax registration. Some part of the gender imbalance may be attributed to the practice of female infanticide. The practice is well documented in China, going back over two thousand years, and it was described as "rampant" and "practiced by almost every family" by contemporary authors. However, the dramatically skewed sex ratios, which many counties reported exceeding 2:1 by 1586, cannot likely be explained by infanticide alone. The number of people counted in the census of 1381 was 59,873,305; however, this number dropped significantly when the government found that some 3 million people were missing from the tax census of 1391. Even though underreporting figures was made a capital crime in 1381, the need for survival pushed many to abandon the tax registration and wander from their region, where Hongwu had attempted to impose rigid immobility on the populace. The government tried to mitigate this by creating their own conservative estimate of 60,545,812 people in 1393. In his Studies on the Population of China, Ho Ping-ti suggests revising the 1393 census to 65 million people, noting that large areas of North China and frontier areas were not counted in that census. Brook states that the population figures gathered in the official censuses after 1393 ranged between 51 and 62 million, while the population was in fact increasing. Even the Hongzhi Emperor (r. 1487–1505) remarked that the daily increase in subjects coincided with the daily dwindling amount of registered civilians and soldiers. William Atwell states that around 1400 the population of China was perhaps 90 million people, citing Heijdra and Mote. Historians are now turning to local gazetteers of Ming China for clues that would show consistent growth in population. Using the gazetteers, Brook estimates that the overall population under the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–87) was roughly 75 million, despite mid-Ming census figures hovering around 62 million. While prefectures across the empire in the mid-Ming period were reporting either a drop in or stagnant population size, local gazetteers reported massive amounts of incoming vagrant workers with not enough good cultivated land for them to till, so that many would become drifters, conmen, or wood-cutters that contributed to deforestation. The Hongzhi and Zhengde emperors lessened the penalties against those who had fled their home region, while the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) finally had officials register migrants wherever they had moved or fled in order to bring in more revenues. Even with the Jiajing reforms to document migrant workers and merchants, by the late Ming era the government census still did not accurately reflect the enormous growth in population. Gazetteers across the empire noted this and made their own estimations of the overall population in the Ming, some guessing that it had doubled, tripled, or even grown fivefold since 1368. Fairbank estimates that the population was perhaps 160 million in the late Ming dynasty, while Brook estimates 175 million, and Ebrey states perhaps as large as 200 million. However, a great epidemic that started in Shanxi Province in 1633, ravaged the densely populated areas along the Grand Canal; a gazetteer in northern Zhejiang noted more than half the population fell ill that year and that 90% of the local populace in one area was dead by 1642. ## See also - Economy of the Ming dynasty - Taxation in premodern China - 1642 Yellow River flood - Kingdom of Tungning - List of tributaries of Imperial China - Luchuan–Pingmian campaigns - Manchuria under Ming rule - Military conquests of the Ming dynasty - Ming ceramics - Ming emperors family tree - Ming official headwear - Ming poetry - Transition from Ming to Qing - Ye Chunji (for further information on rural economics in the Ming) - Zheng Zhilong

New York State Route 28N

Highway in New York

New York State Route 28N (NY 28N) is an east–west state highway in the North Country of New York in the United States. It extends for 50.95 miles (82.00 km) through the Adirondack Mountains from Blue Mountain Lake to North Creek. The route is a northerly alternate route to NY 28 between both locations; as such, it passes through several communities that NY 28 bypasses to the south. The westernmost 10 miles (16 km) of NY 28N overlap with NY 30 through the town of Long Lake. NY 28N and NY 30 split in the hamlet of Long Lake, from where NY 30 heads to the north and NY 28N proceeds eastward through mountainous regions of Adirondack Park. The 40-mile (64 km) section of NY 28N not concurrent with NY 30 is designated as the Roosevelt–Marcy Trail, a scenic byway named for Theodore Roosevelt, who was then the Vice President of the United States. The byway marks the path Roosevelt took in 1901 to reach North Creek from Mount Marcy after learning that President William McKinley had been assassinated. The route has a rather scant history before its designations. The road originated as an old highway stretching from Warren County to Long Lake. It was used for transportation in the iron ore industry in Newcomb, and for the lumber industry in Minerva. New York State gained control of the road in 1909. The NY 28N designation was assigned as part of the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, incorporating part of pre-1930 NY 10. ## Route description NY 28N begins at the intersection with NY 28 and NY 30 near the hamlet of Blue Mountain Lake within the town of Indian Lake. The highway, concurrent with Route 30, heads north through the hamlet nestled at the base of Blue Mountain, one of the highest peaks in Adirondack Park standing, 3,795 feet (1,157 m) above sea level. Routes 28N and 30 track north, gaining elevation after leaving Blue Mountain Lake. Nestled between Blue Mountain and Peaked Mountain, Routes 28N and 30 turn northeast. After intersecting Salmon Pond Road, the highways wind through the mountains and hills of the Adirondacks. Mud Pond and South Pond are on the west, and East Inlet Mountain is on the east. After paralleling Long Lake and the base of East Inlet Mountain, the highways enter the hamlet of Long Lake, where they split. Route 30 heads northwest, while NY 28N turns eastward towards Newcomb. Beyond Long Lake, NY 28N partially remains in a mountainous region; Pinnacle Mountain, a 2,159-foot (658 m) peak, rises to the north, while lowlands lie to the south. The highway progresses eastward, passing Windfall Mountain and proceeding through the center of the park. NY 28N crosses into Essex County, where it becomes the Roosevelt–Marcy Trail, one of 13 scenic byways in the Adirondack Park. The highway, first turning southeast for a short distance, turns east again, passing south of Rich Lake. The two-lane highway passes Baldwin Mountain to the north, and subsequently enters Newcomb, an isolated town between Long Lake and North Creek. The highway exits Newcomb as it approaches the shores of Harris Lake. After crossing one of those creeks, the highway turns to the southeast and into Winebrook Hills. NY 28N passes through Winebrook Hills, and intersects with its first signed roads since Long Lake, County Route 75 (CR 75, named Eaton Lane) and CR 84 (Blue Ridge Road). The latter is a former alignment of NY 73. Nearby is Vanderwhacker Mountain, a 3,386-foot-high (1,032 m) peak and part of the Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest, which the highway passes through. CR 84 eventually parallels the highway to the north of NY 28N, but this slowly begins to change as the main highway begins to progress southward. NY 28N heads south into the hamlet of Aiden Lair and continues south towards Warren County. The highway crosses Boreas Creek, which flows southwest in the park, and eventually passes a series of lakes. NY 28N enters Minerva, where it intersects several county routes, including County Route 29, which heads towards the Warren County border and Interstate 87 (I-87). The road, after leaving Minerva, passes Moxham Mountain, a 2,200-foot (670 m) peak, and eventually crosses the Hudson River. The route ends just after entering North Creek in Warren County, at the intersection with NY 28, its parent route. NY 28N is classified as a rural major collector road, with the exception of the section that is overlapped with Route 30, which is classified as a rural minor arterial road. As of 2006, the Route 30 overlap had an annual average daily traffic of 1,781 vehicles. Traffic volumes are reduced to 1,231 vehicles per day from the end of the Route 30 overlap to the intersection with Blue Ridge Road (CR 84). South of this intersection, traffic is reduced further to 350 until the hamlet of Minerva, rising to 751 south of Minerva until near the Warren county line. Traffic increases back up to 1,248 vehicles per day from there to Route 28 in North Creek. ## History ### Early history: Newcomb and Minerva Many of the earliest roads in the area crossed through Minerva. The first known road that reached the settlement was established in 1804, when land along a highway from St. Lawrence County to the town of Chester in Warren County was populated by the West family. Minerva was mainly limited to the vicinity of the old highway, but as more people settled along the road, the town began to grow. For a time, the town boasted several water-powered sawmills, and the highway was used to transport lumber. However, the lumber industry began to fail, and by 1840, the logging and lumber system had been replaced by crops. The town initiated river drives, which continued until 1950. On March 15, 1828, part of Minerva and nearby Moriah was split into the town of Newcomb. Settlers began to arrive in this area in 1816. Settlement began along the shores of Lake Harris and Newcomb Lake, mainly along the old highway from Warren County to nearby Long Lake. Eventually, highways helped the town grow, and it reached a population of 300 by the 1880 census. The iron ore industry contributed to population growth via 30-mile (48 km) to 40-mile (64 km) roads to Lake Champlain that were meant for hauling ore. The highway from Warren County to Long Lake became part of the state system as early as 1909. After 1845, Newcomb's iron ore industry began to decline and the town evolved into somewhat of a sportsmen's resort. As a result, a road was built connecting Newcomb with nearby Minerva and Long Lake. The 40-mile (64 km) section of 28N between Long Lake and North Creek is a scenic byway named the Roosevelt–Marcy Trail. This was the route traveled on September 10, 1901 by Theodore Roosevelt, then Vice President of the United States. The vice president had hiked to the summit of nearby Mount Marcy earlier, while there, learned that President William McKinley, having been shot four days earlier by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, was near death. Roosevelt took an overnight wagon ride to North Creek. From the train station there, he traveled to Buffalo, where, after McKinley died, he was sworn in as president on September 14. ### Designation and bridge rehabilitation The routing of NY 28N was originally designated, but not signed, as part of legislative Route 25 in 1908. In 1924, the portion of Route 25 from Long Lake to North Creek was designated as part of the signed NY 10. The segment of former Route 25 between Blue Mountain Lake and Long Lake became part of NY 10A in the late 1920s. In the 1930 renumbering, the NY 10A designation was eliminated, and NY 10 was rerouted south of Long Lake to follow the modern routing of NY 30 south to Speculator. The former routing of NY 10 between Long Lake and North Creek was then administratively redesignated as NY 28N, which continued southward from Long Lake to Blue Mountain Lake by way of an overlap with NY 10. The New York State Department of Transportation has scheduled for NY 28N to undergo construction in spring 2013, to rehabilitate the bridge over the Upper Hudson River Railroad. The \$5.9 million project is projected to be complete in fall of 2015, and is to be supported by state and federal funds. New York State Department of Transportation has also planned for NY 28N's bridge over Stillwater Brook in Minerva to be replaced with a stronger structure. The development of the project is expected to take place 2014, with bids and construction starting in 2016. The project has been set to end in 2017, and is predicted to cost \$1.1 million of federal and state funds. ## Major intersections ## See also

Stanford Memorial Church

Church at Stanford University in California, US

Stanford Memorial Church (also referred to informally as MemChu) is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford, California, United States. It was built during the American Renaissance by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland. Designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, a student of Henry Hobson Richardson, the church has been called "the University's architectural crown jewel". Designs for the church were submitted to Jane Stanford and the university trustees in 1898, and it was dedicated in 1903. The building is Romanesque in form and Byzantine in its details, inspired by churches in the region of Venice, especially, Ravenna. Its stained glass windows and extensive mosaics are based on religious paintings the Stanfords admired in Europe. The church has five pipe organs, which allow musicians to produce many styles of organ music. Stanford Memorial Church has withstood two major earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, and was extensively renovated after each. Stanford Memorial Church was the earliest and has been "among the most prominent" non-denominational churches on the West Coast of the United States. Since its dedication in 1903, the church's goal has been to serve the spiritual needs of the university in a non-sectarian way. The church's first chaplain, David Charles Gardner, began a tradition of leadership which has guided the development of Stanford University's spiritual, ethical, and academic relation to religion. The church's chaplains were instrumental in the founding of Stanford's religious studies department, moving Stanford from a "secular university" at the middle of the century to "the renaissance of faith and learning at Stanford" in the late 1960s, when the study of religion at the university focused on social and ethical issues like race and the Vietnam War. ## History ### Early history Stanford Memorial Church is located at the center of Stanford University, and is "the principle building that is seen as the visitor approaches the University along Palm Drive from Palo Alto". It sits the middle of the long southern range of the school's Main Quad. The church was commissioned by Jane Stanford (1828–1905) as a memorial to her husband, Leland Stanford (1824–93). The Stanfords had intended that a church should become "the centerpiece of the university complex". They were deeply religious, and for their day and social standing, "open-minded ecumenicalists", so Jane Stanford was determined that a church built on campus be a "nondenominational—if essentially Protestant—house of worship". Robert C. Gregg, who was chaplain of Memorial Church during the 1980s and 1990s, stated that the Stanfords had two objectives in building the church: to ensure that Stanford students had an opportunity to develop their ethics as well as their studies, and to provide comfort and strength to the community. Leland Stanford died in 1893; legal disputes tied up the Stanford estate and prevented the completion of the university for several years. When the disputes were settled in Jane Stanford's favor, she was finally able to put into motion her wish for a church. In 1898, she and the university trustees requested design submissions for the church. In 1890, Jane Stanford visited her friend Maurizio Camerino in Venice, an artist with a reputation for producing high-quality mosaics; she and her husband had met him years earlier during one of their many trips to Europe. Stanford commissioned Camerino and his company, the Antonio Salviati studios, to produce mosaics for the church. Stanford was involved in every part of the church's design and construction. She was determined that the quality of the stonework of Memorial Church should equal the medieval churches she admired in Europe. According to Memorial Church chaplain Robert C. Gregg, "The grandeur of the church, articulated in its details, greatly occupied Jane Stanford—the structure was to be without flaw". Groundbreaking for the church took place in May 1899; construction began in January 1900. After a delay of almost a year, Stanford Memorial Church was dedicated on January 25, 1903, with "impressive ceremonies". Demonstrating Jane Stanford's goal of ecumenicism, Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger of San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El read the first Bible lesson. The church's pastor, Heber Newton, gave the sermon. A second service was held later that day, and D. Charles Gardner, the chaplain, gave the sermon. Stanford Memorial Church's first christening was held between the two services. Jane Stanford once remarked: "While my whole heart is in the university, my soul is in that church". She died in 1905, and so did not live to see the damage caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Her funeral took place in the church, which was called one of her most important accomplishments and "the truest reflection of her visionary leadership", in March 1905. Clergy from several religious traditions, including a Rabbi, a Presbyterian minister, a Methodist minister, an Episcopal bishop, and a Baptist minister, officiated at the service. ### Earthquakes Stanford Memorial Church has suffered two major earthquakes, in 1906 and in 1989. Although extensively damaged, the church was restored after each. The 1906 quake wrecked much of the church, felled the spire, cracked the walls, and "injured beyond repair" the mosaics and Carrara marble statuary in the chancel. The main cause of the severity of the damage was that the church's original construction failed to attach the crossing structure to the surrounding masonry and roof structures. When the earthquake hit the church, the crossing structure moved independently from the rest of the building, gouging gaping holes in the roofs over the east and west transepts, the nave, and chancel. Its original 12-sided, 80-foot spire and its adjoining clock tower fell on top of the chancel roof, destroying the tower dome's "frescoed Victorian interpretation of God's eye—complete with tear—surrounded by cherubs and shooting star". The debris hit and destroyed the marble sculptures of the twelve apostles that decorated the altar. The spire was never repaired and the tower was removed and replaced by a simpler structure; however, the clock was saved and preserved in a temporary structure behind the church before eventually being placed in another building on campus, the Stanford Clock Tower. University trustees considered re-building the tower, and even looked at possible designs, but eventually chose not to rebuild it because they could not agree on its design, and chose instead to replace the tower with a domed skylight. The crossing structure also pushed the roof of the nave forward. The roof's weak connection to the church's front facade caused the facade to fall into the Inner Quad courtyard; as mosaic expert Joseph A. Taylor put it, "its wondrous mosaic was blown out and totally destroyed". The only mosaics not destroyed in the quake were the four angels that decorated the crossing. The back of the church, with several hundred feet of arcades, was also completely leveled because it too was not joined to the rest of the building. Repairs of the earthquake damage began in 1908, despite misgivings from some university administration regarding its cost; it was closed between 1906 and 1913 while it was repaired. The university president had to postpone academic projects to pay for the church's restoration, as well as the restoration of the entire campus. Ultimately, they chose to repair Memorial Church because they recognized that it was "integral to the identity of the young university". The church and the Old Chemistry building were the only two buildings in the university's Inner Quad that were repaired. The extent of the damage was such that the church had to be completely rebuilt. The entire church, except for its surviving crossing structure and offices, was dismantled stone by stone, which, along with the windows, were labelled and stored, and were later relaid in their original positions. According to architecture historian Willis L. Hall in his 1917 book about the church, "In reconstruction great care has been taken to assure permanence". The stones were securely bolted to each other, "making the whole structure practically one massive hollow rock on a great steel foundation skeleton". The tile floor was replaced with cork. The building's crossing received a tiled hipped roof and an oculus, which lit the interior of the church, and was added above the renovated dome, which had a frescoed ceiling decorated with bronze designs as opposed to the gold leaf present before the earthquake. The original rose window above the front facade was replaced with one with a simpler arch shape because it was more similar to the style of the rest of the buildings in the Inner Quad. The dedication, which was engraved in large letters below the facade mosaic, was replaced by a smaller dedication plaque placed at the lower left of the facade, a choice the university alumni magazine called "a tremendous improvement". Camerino's design of the mosaics that were to fill in the empty space created by the removal of the original dedication, which he offered free of charge, were rejected in favor of a simple version created by John K. Branner (son of university president John Casper Branner) in 1914. Camerino, who did not appraise the damage until 1913, restored the interior mosaics. He had saved the original drawings in Venice, so he removed and re-fabricated the chancel mosaic, and redesigned the entire exterior mosaic. The Stanford alumni magazine, in early 1917, after the completion of the interior mosaics, declared the renovation complete, stating that "the church, for almost the first time since it was begun, is finished". Its appearance after the renovation was "significantly transformed". In 1989 the church was damaged again, in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Although the damage was not as serious as the '06 earthquake, it "spurred intricate strengthening and restoration work" to protect further damage from future earthquakes. The Stanford Quake ‘06 Centennial Alliance stated that the damage was not devastating, even though the building did not fulfill the more stringent earthquake codes in place in 1989, because of the previous renovation after the '06 earthquake. The Alliance also stated that if the earthquake had been stronger or lasted longer, the damage would have been more extensive. The integrity of the structure remained, but the crossing structure, the only major part of the building that was not dismantled and replaced after the 1906 earthquake, buckled and caused several stones in the north and west arches to slip as much as 2 inches (5.1 cm). The four mosaic angels in the pendentives, which decorated its high rounded walls directly below the church's dome and served as the setting beds for hundreds of thousands of tesserae, were severely damaged. Parts of the fallen mosaics were stolen, but later returned anonymously. The angels' damage caused large chunks of mortar and glass to fall to the floor 80 feet (24 m) below, while other sections "were left hanging by the sheer geometry of their arched shape". An eight-foot mosaic section of an angel's left wing in the church's northeast corner fell 70 feet (21 m) to the floor. Several stones from the east arch wall fell onto pews in the balcony, and the organ-loft railing collapsed inward. Although the damage was minor, the church remained closed until 1992 while restoration, as well as a bracing project to protect the building from future earthquakes, without changing the building's decorations, was carried out. The university hired a team of contractors, structural engineers, architects, and conservation specialists to develop a renovation plan, which was paid for by a \$10 million fundraising drive. Many donations came from undergraduates, and the university's board of trustees approved the plan before its funding was in place because they recognized the church's importance to Stanford. In this restoration, the entire crossing was strengthened by bracing it behind the dome and securing it to the superstructure of the building. The restoration team evaluated every decoration in the church and made improvements and changes as necessary, in order to preserve the building's interior elements. They also discovered that the crossing's four large arches were hollow; they also found remnants of the steel frame that supported the original clock tower within a 20" void space in the church's arched walls. They had to fill the void with more than 470 tonnes of concrete and several layers of reinforcing steel in order to improve the walls' stability, an accomplishment the Alliance called "one of the most challenging retrofit feats implemented at Stanford". The roofs, which had not been replaced since 1913, were rebuilt with plywood diaphragms, 30,000 new red clay tiles were installed, and the stones from the decorative arches were reinserted. The wing of the damaged angel was restored; Stanford University hired William Kreysler and Associates to create a new backing system to secure this angel and three other mosaic angels to the base of the dome, which included replacing the original bonding materials (a weak lime mortar), with steel angles that anchored the mosaics to the walls and with a stronger polymer resin. The renovators found a piece of the original mosaic from the vestibule wall, which had a Chi Rho design, in the foundation, and inserted it into the Communion Table in the chancel, linking the current building with the pre-1906 church. The Victorian chandeliers were repaired and rewired, and the transept balconies, which had been closed for twenty years because they were declared unsafe, were reopened, after the false doors on the south side of each balcony were replaced by emergency exits and connected to existing staircases on the other side of the wall. A new sprinkler system and a new audio system was also installed. Stanford Memorial Church was rededicated by chaplain Robert C. Gregg on November 1, 1992. ### Influence According to Stanford professor Van Harvey, Stanford "had the reputation of being a completely secular university" before the 1950s, calling the period a "background of aggressive secularism and the almost complete neglect of the academic study of religion". In 1946, Merrimon Cuninggim, a visiting chaplain at Stanford Memorial Church, criticized the serious lack of religious and spiritual resources available at Stanford for its students and criticized the university's lack of academic courses offered in the study of religions. Cuninggim insisted that the university's administration and trustees were responsible because they had interpreted the non-sectarian clause in Stanford's charter in "a negative and restrictive fashion rather than as enabling the tolerance and the flourishing of many religious faiths on campus". Cuninggim also charged that Stanford's religious policies were inadequate compared to other prominent U.S. universities. Two attempts were made to found a seminary to train pastors and religious leaders at Stanford, in 1921 and in 1940, but both failed. Harvey speculated that if Stanford had established a seminary like other prestigious universities, its religious studies department and the "ethos" of the entire institution would be different. In 1966, however, the university's Board of Trustees got a court order that allowed them to change the non-sectarian clause in Stanford's charter so that they could expand the university's religious program, which included permitting sectarian worship services at Stanford Memorial Church. Stanford did not employ a full-time professor in religion until 1951 and did not establish a religious studies department until 1973, later than most other universities in the U.S. Earlier courses in religion were largely offered by the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church. David Charles Gardner offered a course in Biblical history and literature beginning in 1907, and by 1910, he was teaching New Testament Greek and Bible classes. Gardner's successor, D. Elton Trueblood, whose goal was the establishment of a non-denominational graduate school in religious studies at Stanford, taught classes about the philosophy of religion. In 1941 Trueblood's efforts to expand the study of religion resulted in the creation of a minor in religion, as well as twenty-one courses offered by him and four faculty members. By 1960, the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church no longer had to run the program, which had expanded to allow students the option of majoring in the study of religion. By the mid-1960s, the religious studies program at Stanford was enjoying "enormous success". In the 1960s, the study of religion at Stanford began to focus more on social and ethical issues like race and the Vietnam War. Leading this focus was Stanford Memorial Church Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Religion B. Davie Napier, who was "a powerful critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam". Napier, along with Stanford professors Michael Novak and Robert McAfee Brown, who had previously been faculty members of seminaries, were the subject of a Time Magazine article in 1966, describing "the renaissance of faith and learning at Stanford". Students crowded into the church to hear anti-war speeches by them, as well as by "notables" such as Linus Pauling and William Sloan Coffin. Harvey credited Napier for making the church a popular meeting place on campus for undergraduates and for turning it into "Christian theater—the introduction of jazz and other types of experimental worship as well as provocative preaching". Stanford University was the first major educational institution in the United States that conducted same-sex commitment ceremonies at its chapel. Its first ceremony was held in 1993, and was officiated by Associate Dean Diana Akiyama. In 2017, a campus organization attempted to have Stanford Memorial Church declared a sanctuary church for the undocumented immigrant student population, but was unsuccessful due to university policies regarding the status of the church as part of the university. ### Chaplains Stanford Memorial Church, throughout its history, has been served by chaplains who have been influential amongst the Stanford University student body and community at large. R. Heber Newton, "distinguished writer" and former rector at All Souls Church in New York, was handpicked by Jane Stanford to serve as the church's first pastor; he resigned after four months in 1903 "because he disagreed with Mrs. Stanford on some aspects of church management". According to Stanford biographer Robert W. P. Cutler, "Newton's tenure had been a disappointment to Mrs. Stanford". David Charles Gardner, who replaced Newton, served the church from 1902 to his retirement in 1936. Stanford also handpicked Gardner as Newton's assistant because she was impressed with his "parish work" in Palo Alto. Gardner went on to teach courses in Biblical history and literature at Stanford. Influential English professor and Stanford historian Edith R. Mirrielees called Gardner "a preacher of only indifferent ability", but considered him "a strength to the whole university". Mirrieless considered Gardner the prime mover behind the creation of the Stanford Home for Convalescent Children, established in 1919, which eventually became the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. D. Elton Trueblood, a lifelong Quaker, was the church's chaplain from 1936 to 1946. Trueblood was also a professor of philosophy of religion at Stanford and established the university's first major in religious studies; his tenure there provided him with "the public visibility and financial freedom that made a national ministry possible". He wrote 33 books, including one about Abraham Lincoln. Trueblood and his wife hosted monthly Friends meetings in their home, and met weekly with Orthodox Jewish students in the vestry of Stanford Memorial Church. George J. Hall was the church's chaplain from 1946 to 1947, followed by Paul C. Johnson, who served between 1949 and 1950. Robert M. Minto was chaplain twice, in 1947–1948, and again from 1950–1973. Minto, an associate chaplain at Stanford for two years prior, was a pastor in Scotland and a former British naval chaplain during World War II. Stanford's next two chaplains, B. Davie Napier (Dean of the Chapel, 1966–72) and Robert McAfee Brown (Acting Dean of the Chapel, 1972–73), were among the most politically active chaplains. Napier was an ordained Congregational minister. He was born in China to missionary parents, grew up in the American South, and went to seminary at Yale. He became known at Stanford "for his efforts to relate Scripture to the turbulent political times of the late 1960s". Napier was a "charismatic biblical scholar ... [and] a powerful critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam". Napier was also a "gifted" preacher and jazz pianist. Brown, the author of 29 books, became "an international leader in civil rights, ecumenical and social justice causes". He also protested U.S. involvement in Vietnam and taught religion and ethics in relation to contemporary life and literature. Robert Hamerton-Kelly (1972–86), born in South Africa, was a United Methodist minister. He taught religion, classics, and Greek at Stanford. Thomas Ambrogi was acting dean for "a challenging year" in 1986. Robert C. Gregg (1987–98) was born in Texas and ordained as an Episcopal priest. He was also Professor of Religious Studies (now emeritus). Kelly Denton-Borhaug (1999–2000), a Lutheran minister, came to Stanford in 1996 as an associate dean. The Rev. Scotty McLennan (2001–2014), a Unitarian Universalist minister, was "an activist neighborhood lawyer" in Boston before becoming a university chaplain, first at Tufts University. Garry Trudeau, who was McLennan's roommate when they were students at Yale University, based his Doonesbury character, the Rev. Scot Sloan, in part on McLennan. He was replaced by the Very Rev. Jane Shaw, an Episcopal priest and "a historian of modern religion", in the fall of 2014. #### Staff Stanford Memorial Church is run by the Stanford Office for Religious Life, headed by the current Dean for Religious Life, Tiffany Steinwert. She replaced the Very Rev. Prof. Jane Shaw who was the dean for 4 years, 2014–18. Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann serves as Senior Associate Dean. Stanford has two associate deans: the Rev. Joanne Sanders and Sughra Ahmed. Rabbi Karlin-Neumann is Stanford's first associate dean from outside the Christian tradition. Before coming to Stanford, Karlin-Neumann had been a Hillel director and chaplain at UCLA, Claremont College, and Princeton, and was a rabbi in Alameda, California. She has taught courses in Jewish feminism, rabbinical ethics, education, and social justice. The university changed the title of her position to accommodate a Jewish rabbi, from "Associate Dean of Memorial Church" to "Associate Dean of Religious Life at Stanford". She calls her title at Stanford "Mem Chu and a Jew, too". Joanne Sanders, an Episcopal priest, has worked at Stanford since 2000. She has degrees in theology, sports administration and physical education. She "provides liturgical leadership for Memorial Church on campus for a variety of religious and other events". Muslim dean Sughra Ahmed was appointed in 2017, for the purpose of, as Provost Persis Drell stated, to assist "the Stanford community develop a broader understanding of the Islamic faith, particularly at this time". She was named Muslim Woman of the Year in the United Kingdom in 2014, and is a recognized Muslim leader. Robert Huw Morgan, a native of Wales, has been Stanford Memorial Church's organist since 1999. He attended St John's College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar, and earned two doctorates at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he served on staff as a pianist and conductor. At Stanford, he serves as a lecturer in Organ, Director of the Stanford University Singers, and Director of the Memorial Church Choir. ## Murder Arlis Perry, a 19-year-old who lived on-campus, was murdered there on October 12, 1974. ## Architecture Stanford Memorial Church is part of a linked, complex system of arcades that make up the Quad, which serves to unify the entire complex, is more reminiscent of European public spaces than American ones, and "is probably one of the most important feature of the original Stanford architecture". It was built during the American Renaissance period. Gregg called the church "a perfect example of the movement", with elements of the Renaissance, Byzantine and Medieval art, the Romanesque period, and the Pre-Raphaelites. The architectural style of Stanford Memorial Church has been referred to as "a stunning example of late Victorian ecclesiastical art and architecture with echoes of Pre-Raphaelitism". Stanford historian Richard Joncas called the church "an opulent example of high Victorian architecture with sumptuous materials and arts". The original designs for Memorial Church and much of the university were made in 1886 by prominent American architect Henry Hobson Richardson; when he died that same year, his student Charles A. Coolidge completed them. Coolidge loosely based his design of Memorial Church on Richardson's design of Trinity Church in Boston. The church's heavy red tile roofs, round turrets, low arches, and rough-hewn stonework matches the design of other buildings in the Quad. After Jane Stanford's legal difficulties after her husband's death were resolved, she hired San Francisco architect Clinton E. Day to review and update the church's blueprints. Charles E. Hodges was the supervising architect for the project. Jane Stanford hired builder John McGilvray, who was responsible for constructing the St. Francis Hotel, the City Hall complex in San Francisco, and much of Stanford University, for the actual construction of Stanford Memorial Church. Jane Stanford's taste and knowledge of both contemporary and classical art is evident in several aspects of the plan, appearance, and architecture of the church, which "dazzle the eye yet also produce an atmosphere of quiet contemplation". According to Joncas, "the church emulates the 'glorious color' of the great European cathedrals", especially those in Italy. Although the iconography in the church is Christian, Stanford was a "late Victorian progressive", and chose the art less for its religious themes and more for its "humanitarian ethics". She requested that the designs include women, "to show the uplifting influence of religion for women"; Architectural historian Willis L. Hall claims that there are more depictions of women than in most church imagery at the time. Art historian Judy Oberhausen reports that Stanford used compendium of biblical illustrations like The Story of the Bible by Charles Foster, which contained 300 illustrations and summarized the events and stories she wished to depict in the church's windows and mosaics. Jane Stanford's design included inspirational messages placed throughout the church in the form of inscriptions carved into its walls and enclosed in carved frameworks. As Barbara Palmer of the Stanford Report stated, Stanford "had her religious beliefs literally carved into the church's sandstone walls". For example, the following quotations can be found in the church's east transept: > Religion is intended as a comfort, a solace, a necessity to the soul's welfare; and whichever form of religion furnishes the greatest comfort, the greatest solace, it is the form which should be adopted be its name what it will. > The best form of religion is trust in God, and a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, life everlasting. ### Plan The church is a cruciform structure; its original structure, which included a clock and bell tower with an 80-foot (24 m) spire, was 190 feet (58 m) long and 150 feet (46 m) wide. The facade faces the Inner Quad, and is connected to other buildings by arcades which extend laterally. The entry is through a narthex or vestibule extending across the building. The nave has a single aisle on either side, separated by an arcade with a clerestory above it. The crossing is formed by a structure of square plan which once supported the central tower. Over it is a shallow dome supported on pendentives and rising to a skylit oculus. High semicircular Romanesque arches separate the crossing from the nave, transepts and chancel. The chancel and transepts are apsidal. There are deep galleries with concave balustraded fronts in the transepts and an organ gallery above the narthex. The sanctuary, in the chancel, is elevated and approached by steps. A round-shaped room is at the back of the building, added in 1902 by architect Clinton Day. ### Exterior The chief building material of the church is buff sandstone, which came from the Goodrich Quarry (also called the Greystone Quarry) in the Almaden area of San Jose, was delivered by train and rough-cut in the university Quad. Gregg credits the high quality of the stonework to church and university builder John D. McGilvray. The church is roofed with terracotta tiles of the Italian imbrex and tegula form. The nave, chancel, and transepts appear to project from the square central structure, roofed with tiles and a small skylight above its center. Memorial Church originally had a central bell tower with an 80-foot tall, twelve-sided spire, but this was lost as a result of the 1906 earthquake. The church's facade is surmounted by a simple Celtic cross, a motif that appears several times throughout the building. The cross was added after the 1906 earthquake; its central shaft was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake and replaced. There are three arched entrances below the exterior mosaic; the central one is slightly larger than the others. The surrounding stonework is intricately carved with stylized flora, twisted-cable moldings, and bosses of sculpted cherubim, a motif which occurs in different media throughout the church. In the spandrels are mosaic depictions of the biblical concepts of love, faith, hope and charity intertwined in a vine representing the "tree of life". In the upper zone of the facade, surrounded by more elaborate stonework and "lacy carving", is a large central window, with groups of three smaller windows on each side. The original central window was a quatrefoil-shaped rose window, but after the 1906 earthquake, it was replaced by a "classical round-head window that more grandly restates the smaller flanking, articulated openings" and that corresponded with the mission-style architecture of the Quad. Beneath the windows are inlaid panels of colored marble. The gable and surrounding surfaces contain the church's largest mosaic, created by Maurizio Camerino's studio, which they rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake. Measuring 84 feet (26 m) wide at the base and 30 feet (9.1 m) in height, at the time of its completion, it was the largest mosaic in the U.S. It depicts a group of men, women and children, 47 in all, surrounding and "paying close heed" to Christ, the mosaic's central figure, and includes a landscape with "waving palms and a gleaming sky" behind Christ. The exterior mosaic took 12 men two years to complete. After Jane Stanford's death, the mosaic popularly gained the name "The Sermon on the Mount", although Stanford University historian Richard Joncas insists that the mosaic does not depict the scene as described in the Gospel of Matthew and has referred to it as "an indefinite biblical scene". In the Stanford University press release about the 1992 gift of three watercolor studies for the church's mosaics, Paoletti's design for the facade is described as "Christ Welcoming the Righteous into the Kingdom of God", based on Matthew 25:34. Paoletti created another unfinished watercolor depicting "The Last Judgment", as another option for the facade mosaic, but it was evidently rejected by Stanford. ### Interior Jane Stanford has been described as having a "Victorian aversion to blank space" and so created a church that is "a dimly lit cavern of glowing mosaic surfaces ... and vibrant, stained-glass windows". The church is richly decorated throughout, its architectural features carved with formalized foliate ornament, and the walls adorned with mosaics in the Byzantine manner. Even though the church was dedicated in 1903, interior decoration took another two years to complete, with the installation of the mosaics and the carving of the extensive quotations on the walls occurring simultaneously. There are 29 large carvings of quatrefoils that contain ancient religious symbols in the walls of church's west and east transepts. The stained-glass windows were crafted by J. and R. Lamb of New York. Its exposed-timber ceilings are modeled after Boston's Trinity Church. The church is entered through three bronze doors adorned with angels, a recurring motif throughout the church. The doors open up into a narthex or vestibule decorated with mosaics on the walls, illuminated by the many colors of the stained glass windows, and stone carvings on the architectural details. There is a variety of styles and motifs reflecting the hands of different craftsmen. The mosaic that adorns the floor depicts the Lamb of God surrounded by the symbols of the four gospel writers: St. Matthew (the winged angel), St. Mark (the winged lion), St. Luke (the ox), and St. John (the eagle). Some of these symbols also appear in other areas of the church. A Celtic cross adorns the stained glass above the central wooden door that leads into the nave, and Latin epigraphs have been engraved above the two side doors. Above the narthex is an organ gallery. The nave is arcaded and has a single aisle on each side with clerestory windows above. Its walls, from the floor to the top of the clerestory, are decorated with 15 murals made of mosaics on each side, and depicts scenes from the Old Testament. The exposed timber ceiling was inspired by Trinity Church and is constructed with tied hammer beams, which can be seen radiating in the chancel. The floor of the church slopes downward towards the crossing. The chancel and transepts are three semi-circular apses. They are separated from the broad central space by large semi-circular arches on stout columns with carved capitals. The transept apses each have a balcony with a concave balustrade. Directly above the crossing is a dome supported on pendentives. Around the base of the dome are decorative gilt bands, the lower depicting a scrolling vine. Jane Stanford intended the dome's decoration of to be of mosaic tiles showing a variety of symbols, but the church's builders thought it would make the dome too heavy, so the decorations were painted. On the spandrels of the pendentives are mosaics of four angels measuring 42 feet (13 m) from wing tip to wing tip, rising from clouds. The angels survived the 1906 earthquake, but the angel looking downward was severely damaged during the 1989 earthquake because an 8-foot section of its left wing fell 70 feet (21 m). The chancel, according to Hall, contains "artistic work of a kind seldom seen anywhere". The raised tiled floor of the chancel curves outward into the body of the church, and is approached by seven marble steps. The sanctuary is raised further, and enclosed by a marble altar rail behind which is an altar carved from white Carrara marble by L.M. Avenali. The altar supports a "simple unadorned brass cross that reflects the colors of the mosaics surrounding it." The cross was made by William van Erp and was dedicated to the memory of Jane Stanford in 1948. Behind the altar is a mosaic reproduction of Rosselli's "Last Supper". Around the lower walls of the chancel are twelve niches decorated with golden mosaic tiles. They hold candles, but originally held statues of the twelve apostles, destroyed in 1906 and were never replaced. According to local legend, the cherubim carved in stone above the golden niches and in the pillars' capitals are illustrations of children living on campus at the time of the church's construction. To the west side of the chancel stands brass lectern in the form of a reading angel, which Jane Stanford brought from Europe and dedicated to her husband on the anniversary of his birth in 1902. Three stained glass windows in the apse depict the nativity, crucifixion, and ascension of Christ. The mosaics between them show angels, those on the left carrying a cross, those on the right carrying a crown. On the longer sections of the chancel wall, on either side of the windows, are mosaics depicting a choir of angels. Above them is a tier of mosaics with representations of the prophets and kings of Israel. Other mosaics abound in the transepts, clerestory, and the choir loft at the northern end of the church. A series of mosaics in the upper transepts depict Old Testament figures on the east side and Christian saints on the west side. On Jane Stanford's direction, they alternate male and female. The arches, balcony rails, and pillars throughout the church have relief carvings created by a team of 10 men who worked for two years from scaffolding. A large double pillar before the entrance of the west transept have inscriptions dedicated to members of the Stanford family. After the 1989 earthquake, a third of the west transept was converted into a small chapel. The altar and chairs in this chapel were designed by Bay Area artist Gail Fredell who decorated the chapel's altar by using Salvatti's original mosaics, which had been stored since the church's reconstruction following the 1906 earthquake. #### Windows According to architectural historian Willis L. Hall, the church's 20 large stained glass windows "are as much a feature of the church as the mosaics". The windows, designed by Frederick Stymetz Lamb (1862–1928) and fabricated by J&R Lamb Studios, his father's firm in New York City, took three years to complete, and eight months to install at Stanford. Jane Stanford hired Lamb because she felt he was more interested in "the ecclesiastical rather than commercial aspect of the work". The installation of the windows at Stanford Memorial Church was the largest commission awarded to an American stained glass artist at the time, and the project is "considered the finest example of Lamb's work". The window have a different appearance when viewed from the outside of the building because the reflected light highlights the textures of the glass panels, created by using many layers of different colored glass. Stanford chose the life of Christ for the windows' theme, inspired by the religious paintings by European master painters such as Frederic Shields and Gustave Doré. The windows have a section at the bottom with the scriptural quotations their images depict; the larger windows also include their titles. Stanford's personal touch is shown in one of the nave windows, which is based on a cartoon by Paoletti and depicts Christ welcoming the soul of a child into Heaven before the eyes of its grieving mother, an allusion to the death of Leland Stanford Jr., the Stanfords' only child and the university's namesake, who died in 1884 of typhoid shortly before his 16th birthday. Oberhausen, who has studied the source of the mosaics and windows, states that at least four stained glass windows were inspired by the paintings of Pre-Raphaelite artists that were enjoying a resurgence in popularity at the time. These windows are: "Christ in the Temple" in the east transept, based upon a painting by William Holman Hunt; "The Annunciation" in the east nave, inspired by a work by Frederic Shields; "The Nativity" in the chancel, based upon a painting by Edward Fellowes-Prynne; and "The Good Shepherd" in the west transept, inspired by a painting by Sibyl C. Parker, the only female artist represented in the artwork of the church. None of the windows of Stanford Memorial Church required replacement after the 1906 quake, except for "the famous rose window of the original structure" in the organ loft which was replaced by the current large, central arch window. This window, entitled "Lilies of the Field", is the only window in the church that cannot be viewed from the inside because it is blocked off by the central organ. There is a cross in the center of this window made of "faceted pieces of glass that are inset like gems", which sparkle when light strikes it. The church's clerestory contains many smaller windows of individuals from the Bible or Christian history. The windows in the nave above the east arcade depict the following Old Testament figures: Abraham, Hagar and her child Ishmael, Moses, Pharaoh's Daughter, Joshua, and Deborah. The windows in the east transept depict David, Ruth, Solomon, The Queen of Sheba, Elijah, Esther, Isaiah, Judith, Daniel, and Hannah. In the nave above the west arcade feature saints and virtues: Stephen, Agnes, Peter, Priscilla, John, and Hope. In the west transept are Simeon, Anne, Matthew, Faith, Mark, Charity, Luke, Dorcas, Paul, and Martha. The clerestory above the east and west doors are two windows of angels. Unlike the other windows throughout the church, they do not receive natural light from outside and are artificially illuminated instead. #### Mosaics The mosaics that decorate Stanford Memorial Church, which Taylor considers "a perfect complement to Frederick Lamb's stained-glass windows", are "virtually everywhere" inside the church. According to Gregg, Jane Stanford came up with the idea, calling it "idiosyncratic by some architectural historians", of extensively decorating Memorial Church's interior and facade, similar in style to the mosaics in many of the churches she and her husband admired during their travels in Europe. One of the reasons she chose mosaics was because of the similar weather in Italy and Northern California, where the moderate climates and rainy seasons in both settings protect the images from erosion and clear the pollution that accumulates on many buildings in large cities. As Hall states, the "mosaics on the facade are always clear and brilliant." During the Stanfords' 1883 tour of Europe, they visited Byzantine churches in Constantinople and St Mark's Basilica in Venice. They met and befriended Maurizio Camerino, the manager of the Antonio Salviati studios, which had just completed restoring the mosaics at St Mark's. Stanford began working with Camerino, who by that time had bought the Salviati studios, in 1899, and spent two months in Venice in the fall of 1900, selecting the watercolors created as the mosaics' patterns by Camerino's chief designer, Antonio Paoletti. Camerino's firm worked exclusively on the Stanford mosaics for three years; the project, which included the mosaics created for the university museum, was the largest mosaic project in the U.S. at the time. Stanford worked closely with Paoletti, planning a combination of Old Testament and New Testament scenes that represented men and women equally. The mosaic project began in 1900, took five years to complete, and cost US\$97,000. The "shimmering quality" of the mosaics, which resemble tapestry, were created by different tones of green and gold; the artists that installed them had over 20,000 shades of colors to choose from. Paoletti's watercolors were divided into two-foot-square sections, which were made into glass by other artists in Venice. The mosaics were then shipped in pieces by boat to New York and then by railroad to California, where they were placed on the church's walls. Artisan Lorenzo Zampato was given the task of supervising the in-studio fabrication and final installation at Stanford, which took 4 years to complete. The mosaic adorning the church's chancel is a reproduction of Rosselli's fresco of the Last Supper from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Camerino obtained permission from Pope Leo XIII to reproduce it at Stanford Memorial Church. Unlike other works, which were reproduced frequently, it was the only reproduction of Rosselli's fresco at the time. There are 12 mosaics in each transept balcony that are split into two sets of six, creating an arc of six mosaics, ten windows, and six mosaics. Most of the church's mosaics were made from 1/8-inch tiles; larger 3/4-inch tiles were used on the higher mosaics, and smaller 1/4-inch tiles were used in "The Last Supper" mosaic. #### Organs Stanford Memorial Church houses five organs, a "situation only a few places in the nation can boast". The presence of high-quality organs makes Stanford an ideal location for accomplished musicians, and the sanctuary one of California's best settings for instrumental and choral performance. The church's organist is Robert Huw Morgan. Stanford Memorial Church's first organ, the 1901 Murray Harris, named for its builder Murray M. Harris, sits in the upstairs gallery and is still in use. Damaged in the 1906 earthquake, the organ was rebuilt in 1925, enlarged in 1933, and thoroughly restored in 1996. It features three manuals (keyboards for the hands), 57 stops, and over 3,700 pipes. The Murray Harris plays music from the Romantic period; its sound has been described as "romantic [and] undulating" and "like a low-decibel airplane engine revving up" Morgan compares the Murray Harris to both a Rolls-Royce and a Bentley. The Fisk-Nanney organ, which many consider one of the best organs in the world, was built in 1985 and is also housed in the church's upstairs gallery. It is named after its builder, Charles Brenton Fisk, and for Herbert Nanney, who was the church's organist for 39 years. Although it was commissioned in 1973, its completion was delayed for many years, due to logistical, financial, and construction issues. The organ's case is made of poplar wood and its almost 4,500 pipes are made of varying sizes of lead and tin. Its keyboards, which Morgan calls the "flight deck," are made with grenadilla, with rosewood making up its natural and sharps, and are capped with bone. The organ's keyboards are black on white, instead of the modern white on black. The stop controls create "a huge array of sounds". The Fisk-Nanney is a four-manual Baroque-type organ with 73 ranks. It uses a "combination of elements from historic East German, North German, and French organs plus dual temperaments", and is "the first instrument in the history of organ building that is capable of reproducing nearly all organ music written from the 16th through the 18th centuries". The organ, which "has remarkable complexity", features both French- and German-style reeds and principal choruses. It is equipped with a Brustpositiv division in meantone temperament. A lever allows the remaining divisions to alternate between well temperament and meantone temperament, a feature made possible by the inclusion of five extra pipes (two for each sharp key) per octave. Morgan describes the organ's sound as "delicious" and "visceral", ringing with "'incredible clarity' and 'dark color'", and compares it to driving a Maserati. He insists that the best place to listen to the Fisk-Nanny is not upstairs in the gallery where it sits, but in the church, "about halfway down the nave". In 2005 Morgan performed the complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude during a series of recitals, eight hours in all, to celebrate the organ's 20th anniversary. During the 2009–2010 school year, Morgan commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Fisk-Nanney organ and his 10th year at Stanford in a concert series of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which took 18 hours to complete. Memorial Church's third organ, the Katherine Potter-Brinegar organ, was built in 1995 and was named for the spouse of Stanford alumni Claude S. Brinegar. It "further enhances" the diversity of the organs in Stanford Memorial Church, and was inspired by a famous chamber organ designed by German organ maker Esias Compenius in 1610. It is self-contained, with its blower and bellows encased in its walnut case, and has hidden, retractable wheels that allow it to moved anywhere in the church. It is a single-manual organ; most of its pipework is made of different types of wood, and has 8 speaking stops, 3 of which are made of reed pipes. Its sound has been described as "relaxed and refined to the listener". The continuo organ built by Martin Pasi of Roy, Washington was acquired in June 2001. It contains three stops. The case and most of its pipes are made of walnut, and its keys are made of ebony and English boxwood. In 2010 the church received on long-term loan a five-rank Tudor-style organ built by Hupalo & Repasky Pipe Organs. It is a recreation based upon the work of English organ builders and restorers Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn and of the discovery in 1995 of the upper boards, grid, and table of a rare English organ, one of only three out of the five organs of the type in existence. It is a "small but tonally versatile" organ typical of the Tudor era of the 16th century. The Tudor organ's 200 pipes are made from metals with high tin content, and its façade pipes have been gilded and embossed. Its case, which was inspired by organ cases in churches in Wales and Stanford-on-Avon, is made of stained white oak, with hand-carved panels of linen fold and Tudor rose (inspired by the Tudor rose on Shrewsbury Tower at St. John's College in Cambridge) carvings. The Tudor's keys are made of European pear wood; its sharps are made of ebony. It has two large feeder bellows that supply the organ's wind. The organ's sound is "surprisingly full and has a singing bell-like quality". ## Services and facilities Although the Stanfords were religious and viewed "spiritual and moral values as essential to a young person's education and future citizenship", they were not formally committed to any Christian denomination. As a result, Jane Stanford decreed, from the beginning of Stanford Memorial Church's history, that the church be non-denominational. She believed that adopting this philosophy would "serve the broadest spiritual needs of the university community". The church's first chaplain, Charles Gardner, declared on the day of its dedication that the church's goal was to serve the spiritual needs of the university in a non-sectarian way. The Stanfords' goal was that moral instruction would occur at the church, as demonstrated in the inscriptions carved into its walls, which was influenced by the late 19th-century liberal Protestantism they embraced. As former Stanford chaplain Robert C. Gregg states, "The Stanfords sought to protect free intellectual inquiry—in classroom, laboratory, and church—from any interference prompted by the caution or dogmatism of religious authorities". Stanford Memorial Church was the earliest and has been "among the most prominent" non-denominational churches on the West Coast of the United States. Multi-faith services are held at Stanford Memorial Church, in addition to denominational and non-denominational Christian services. As many as 150 weddings or renewal ceremonies take place in the church each year, for current and former students and their children or grandchildren, for Stanford faculty and staff members, and for others connected to the university. Memorial services, conducted by Stanford's dean and other chaplain officials, for students, alumni, faculty, and staff are also conducted at the church. Members of the university community use Memorial Church for "quiet, for reflection, and for private devotions". Catholic masses are held in the church several times a week. ## See also - Arlis Perry

The Other Woman (Lost)

"The Other Woman" is the 78th episode of the serial drama television series Lost and the sixth episode of the show's fourth season. It aired on March 6, 2008 on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in the United States and on CTV in Canada. The episode was written by co-executive producer Drew Goddard and executive story editor Christina M. Kim, and was directed by Eric Laneuville. The narrative begins on December 24, 2004, 94 days after the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. Recent island arrivals Daniel Faraday (played by Jeremy Davies) and Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader) leave the survivors' camp without notice for the Dharma Initiative electrical station called the Tempest. In flashbacks that depict events on the island, Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that her boss Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), the leader of the island's original inhabitants referred to as the Others, is in love with her. The writers advanced several story lines with "The Other Woman". The episode furthers Juliet's back story and relationships, sheds more light on the season's new characters, and features the first appearance of Harper Stanhope (Andrea Roth). The introduction of the Tempest further develops the series' mythology, specifically the "purge". In the third season, the purge was mentioned in episode "Enter 77" and seen in "The Man Behind the Curtain". "The Other Woman" was watched by 15 million Americans and received mixed reviews. Critics from the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and BuddyTV deemed it the worst episode of the season, partially due to a flashback storyline that was seemingly recycled from the third-season episode, "One of Us". Another criticism was that audiences learned more about Ben than Juliet, despite the episode's focus on Juliet. Emerson received more praise for his acting than Mitchell, but Mitchell won a Saturn Award for her performance. Positive reviews commended the action in the episode's climax. ## Plot The episode opens with flashbacks to Juliet's life on the island following her recruitment in by the Others. Juliet has an affair with an Other named Goodwin (Brett Cullen), who is married to Harper Stanhope. Harper discovers the affair, and warns Juliet that their leader Ben has a crush on Juliet and will punish Goodwin for the affair. Following the crash of Flight 815, Ben sends him to infiltrate a group of surviving passengers; Goodwin is killed by Ana Lucia Cortez after she realizes he is not a survivor. In October 2004, Ben invites Juliet to what he initially describes as a dinner party, but is actually a private date. Ben leads Juliet to Goodwin's impaled corpse, where she accuses him of having wanted Goodwin to die. Ben then reveals his love for her. On the night of December 24, 2004 (three months after the crash of Flight 815), two members of a science team from the Kahana freighter anchored offshore—Daniel and Charlotte—sneak off to find the Tempest. Juliet and the crash survivors' leader Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) notice their absence from the beach camp and pursue them. After hearing the whispers, Harper approaches Juliet. She tells her that Daniel and Charlotte intend to kill everyone on the island by deploying a lethal gas at the Tempest and that Ben's orders are for Juliet to kill them. On a trek back to the beach in the morning, Kate encounters Daniel and Charlotte and is knocked unconscious by the latter. Jack and Juliet come across Kate and they split up: Juliet continues for the Tempest alone, as Jack minds Kate. Inside the station, Juliet finds Daniel in a hazmat suit at a computer. After a standoff, Daniel and Charlotte convince Juliet that they are not going to kill anyone; they are neutralizing the gas in case Ben decides to use it again, as he had twelve years earlier in an Others-led purge of Dharma. Jack arrives at the Tempest and Juliet explains that those on the freighter came to the island to wage war against Ben and she expects him to win. She fears for Jack because Ben thinks that she belongs to him, but Jack shows no worry and kisses her. In the Barracks, Ben bargains with 815 survivor John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) for his freedom. He reveals that Charles Widmore (Alan Dale)—the father of Desmond Hume's (Henry Ian Cusick) girlfriend, Penny (Sonya Walger)—owns the freighter and hopes to exploit the island. Ben also tells Locke who his spy on the freighter is. Ben continues to reside in the Barracks following his release. ## Production When asked about what she learned about her character through "The Other Woman", Elizabeth Mitchell surmised that Juliet's "mistakes are morally questionable, if not morally wrong. But you do see that behind this is a human being who is struggling to live and have a life that makes sense to her." Mitchell did not think that Juliet was too surprised that Ben has romantic feelings for her, but that the circumstances of receiving this information was horrifying because the character had just found out that Goodwin had died. Michael Emerson thought that his character Ben was childish when he shouted "you're mine!" to Juliet; Mitchell compared him to "a twelve-year-old boy throwing a temper tantrum over ... his first love". Mitchell was emotionally drained while shooting this episode because she was intimidated by Emerson and Matthew Fox's acting skills. Co-executive producer and staff writer Adam Horowitz stated that "It's always interesting to pull back another layer on one of our characters, and to see another chapter in Juliet's story on the island and bring us to where she is now was great", while fellow co-executive producer and staff writer Edward Kitsis thought that "the interesting thing about the episode is the way Ben looks at Juliet ... everything is informed by that look." Horowitz also enjoyed the juxtaposition of Juliet's character development with the revelations on the "freighter folk". Kitsis picked the episode's final scene where Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) discover that Ben has negotiated his release and will be dining with them that evening as his favorite of the episode. Actress Rebecca Mader, who plays Charlotte, said that she was excited for the episode to air because she thought that it was better than the previous episode, which is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series. Charlotte knocks Kate unconscious with the barrel of her gun and asks "what?" to a speechless Daniel in "The Other Woman". Mader found this hilarious and described it as "the pinnacle of career". Andrea Roth makes her first and only appearance as Harper in "The Other Woman". During casting in early October, Harper was described as "a tough, no-nonsense and beautiful overly controlling and obsessive." The character was initially slated to be a recurring role; however, Harper did not make another appearance in the season. The writers later stated that she would eventually reappear but this did not happen. A jungle scene with Mitchell, Fox and Roth was filmed until 4:00 a.m. on October 27, 2007, with industrial sprinklers and Mitchell referred to this as her "most intense experience on the show". Harper's appearance and disappearance in this scene are sudden so fans speculated that this was actually an apparition or manifestation of the island's black smoke monster. This was refuted by Lost's writers. Named after William Shakespeare's 1610 play of the same name, the Tempest first appears in "The Other Woman" and is alluded to on an unseen layer of the Dharma "Swan" station's blast door map of the second season. The writers wanted to explain some of the island's history in the fourth season and decided that "The Other Woman" would reveal where the gas that Ben used came from and that Dharma had stations set up for protection against hostile forces. They also enjoyed having Goodwin on the show and wanted to bring him back. "The Other Woman" had commenced filming by October 11, 2007, and was completed on October 30. "The Other Woman" contains Jack and Juliet's second kiss. Juliet was conceived by the writers as the next possible love interest for Jack after the death of the second season character Ana Lucia Cortez (Michelle Rodriguez). Fans hated Ana Lucia so the writers did not pursue the romantic story arc. Mitchell guesses that her character was created because "they needed a bridge between Ben and everyone else, and they needed someone to come in and be a little salt in the oyster of Jack and Kate." She believes that Juliet did genuinely fall in love with Jack, but not knowing whether "her attraction to Jack or her willingness to do anything to get off the island" is more important to her. Juliet forms something of a "love rectangle" with Jack, Kate and Sawyer. Mitchell "feel like a very grown-up relationship. They seem to really respect and like each other", whereas Sawyer and Kate are like "rambunctious teenagers". The couple gained an Internet fandom and was given the portmanteau nickname "Jacket". ## Reception "The Other Woman" was watched live or recorded and watched within five hours of broadcast by 13.008 million viewers in the United States, ranking seventh for the week in television programs with the most viewers and achieving a 5.4/13 in the coveted adults aged eighteen to forty-nine demographic. Including those who watched within seven days of broadcast, the episode was watched by a total of 14.933 million American viewers; this number went toward the season's average. 1.439 million Canadians watched it, making Lost the eighth highest-rated show of the week. In the United Kingdom, 1.1 million people viewed the episode. The episode brought in 691,000 viewers in Australia, placing it as the twenty-second most watched show of the night. A common claim by critics was that more was learned about supporting player Ben than Juliet, the latter of which was centered on in flashbacks. Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly praised Emerson's acting, while SyFy Portal's Dan Compora said that "The more I hate Ben, the more I realize that Michael Emerson is just a very fine actor doing his job." Oscar Dahl of BuddyTV called Emerson an acting "god" and said that while it was a Juliet-centric episode, Ben made a bigger impression on him. Mitchell received the award for "Best Supporting Actress on Television" at the 34th Saturn Awards for her work in this episode. "The Other Woman" has been cited as the weakest episode of Lost's fourth season. Despite his claim, Patrick Day of the Los Angeles Times pointed out that "even this so-so episode of Lost stood far above anything else being shown on network TV this season". He described Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) appearance as heartbreaking because it reminded him of how little the character had done to advance the season's plot. BuddyTV's John Kubicek said "The Other Woman" was the worst episode of the season so far because it focused on the romantic interests of major characters, while most of the show's audience watches the show for other aspects. Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly graded the episode as a "C−" and called it "the only true dud of the season" and criticised the plot. He disliked Roth's performance as "unreal", while TV Guide's Bruce Fretts praised Roth's appearance. Maureen Ryan of Chicago Tribune said that "The Other Woman" was predictable and reused plot elements from previous seasons. The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall considered the episode to be the second weakest of the fourth season after "Eggtown", criticizing the show for not previously explaining the purpose of the Tempest station and redundancy of Juliet's flashbacks. "The Other Woman" was also the subject of mixed reviews. Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the episode slowed down the pacing of the season, which was noticed by the audience. Time's James Poniewozik had mixed feelings for the flashbacks, but enjoyed Ben's character development. Nikki Stafford of Wizard "enjoyed" the "interesting" episode, although "not nearly as much" as the previous episode. She rejoiced at the return of Tom (M.C. Gainey) and wrote that "Locke used to be one of favorite characters, but now he's a tool". Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones stated that "the episode came together nicely in the end, with an expected twist and a snog, although for a great part it bordered on tedium. Juliet is a character who simply isn't interesting enough to fully sustain one's attention over a flashback. She's been so peripheral and irrelevant over this season, and it felt like a token gesture to foreground her at last. There was a nice pay off though, with a long awaited smooch between her and Jack." Daniel of TMZ graded the episode as a "C+"; however, he wrote that "the Ben/Locke scenes were great and Juliet in a bikini did not disappoint." TV Squad's Erin Martell was "not impressed with Jack and Juliet's chemistry" and found their kiss "unconvincing". Martell commended Emerson's acting, Ben's one-liners and his "too funny for words" casual greeting to Hurley and Sawyer at the end of the episode after he is released from captivity. The Huffington Post's Jay Glatfelter thought that "this was another great episode could have lived up to last week's episode, but there was still a lot of solid character development." Verne Gay of Newsday referred to the episode as "yet another brilliant outing by TV's best drama keeps getting better"; she was not the only critic to give a positive review. E!'s Kristin Dos Santos thought that the fight scene between Juliet and Charlotte in the Tempest was "awesome" and suggested that Alan Dale receive a "lifetime achievement award for his parade of marvelously malicious patriarchs", such as Widmore. Chris Carabott of IGN gave the episode a score of eight out of ten and described it as "a good episode of Lost that has all the action, suspense and excitement that this show consistently delivers". Carabott wrote that "seeing how twisted [Ben and Juliet's] 'relationship' really is was fascinating". SyFy Portal's Dan Compora wrote that "this week's episode contributed to what is shaping up to be a pretty solid fourth season. ... Fine acting carried the episode despite a few potholes in the plot." Compora also enjoyed the title and the physical altercation between Juliet and Charlotte.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

1974 nonfiction book by Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a 1974 nonfiction narrative book by American author Annie Dillard. Told from a first-person point of view, the book details Dillard's explorations near her home, and various contemplations on nature and life. The title refers to Tinker Creek, which is outside Roanoke in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Dillard began Pilgrim in the spring of 1973, using her personal journals as inspiration. Separated into four sections that signify each of the seasons, the narrative takes place over the period of one year. The book records the narrator's thoughts on solitude, writing, and religion, as well as scientific observations on the flora and fauna she encounters. It touches on themes of faith, nature, and awareness, and is also noted for its study of theodicy and the cruelty of the natural world. The author has described it as a "book of theology", and she rejects the label of nature writer. Dillard considers the story a "single sustained nonfiction narrative", although several chapters have been anthologized separately in magazines and other publications. The book is analogous in design and genre to Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1854), the subject of Dillard's master's thesis at Hollins College. Critics often compare Dillard to authors from the Transcendentalist movement; Edward Abbey in particular deemed her Thoreau's "true heir". Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper's Magazine Press shortly after Dillard's first book, a volume of poetry titled Tickets for a Prayer Wheel. Since its initial publication, Pilgrim has been lauded by critics. It won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, and in 1998 it was included in Modern Library's list of 100 Best Nonfiction Books. ## Background and publication Dillard was the daughter of an oil company executive and grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Pittsburgh. She read voraciously; one of her favorite books was Ann Haven Morgan's The Field Book of Ponds and Streams, which she compared to the Book of Common Prayer; in painstaking detail, it instructed on the study and collection of plants and insects. She attended Hollins College in Roanoke County, Virginia, receiving both a bachelor's (1967) and a master's degree (1968). At Hollins she came under the tutelage of poet and creative writing professor Richard Henry Wilde Dillard, whom she married in 1965. She would later state that Richard taught her everything she knew about writing. Her master's thesis, entitled Walden Pond and Thoreau, studied the eponymous pond as a structuring device for Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Dillard's knowledge of Thoreau's works was an obvious inspiration, although critics have pointed to many differences between their two works. However, in a nod to his influence, Dillard mentions within the text that she named her goldfish Ellery Channing, after one of Thoreau's closest friends. After graduating in 1968, she continued to live in Virginia, near the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she wrote full-time. At first she concentrated solely on poetry, which she had written and published when she was an undergraduate. She began keeping a journal in 1970, in which she recorded her daily walks around Tinker Creek. Her journals would eventually consist of 20 volumes. In 1971, after suffering from a serious bout of pneumonia, she decided to write a full-length book dedicated to her nature writings. Dillard wrote the first half of Pilgrim at her home in spring 1973, and the remaining half the following summer in a study carrel "that overlooked a tar-and-gravel roof" at the Hollins College library. She would later explain her choice of writing location as stemming from her wanting to avoid "appealing workplaces . ... One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark." When she first began writing the book, Dillard would only dedicate one or two hours a day to the task; by the last two months, however, she was writing nearly 15–16 hours a day. Dillard's primary reader for Pilgrim was the Hollins professor John Rees Moore. After finishing a chapter, she would bring it to him to critique. Moore specifically recommended that she expand the book's first chapter "to make clear, and to state boldly, what it was [she] was up to," a suggestion that Dillard at first dismissed, but would later admit was good advice. Before its publication, chapters of the book appeared in publications such as Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic and The Living Wilderness. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek was published by Harper's Magazine Press in 1974, and was dedicated to Dillard's husband. Editor in chief Larry Freundlich remarked upon first reading the book: "I never expected to see a manuscript this good in my life . ... The chance to publish a book like this is what publishers are here for." ## Summary The book is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and consists of a series of internal monologues and reflections. Over the course of a year, she observes and reflects upon the changing of the seasons as well as the flora and fauna near her home. Pilgrim is thematically divided into four sections, one for each season, consisting of separate, named chapters: "Heaven and Earth in Jest", "Seeing", "Winter", "The Fixed", "The Knot", "The Present", "Spring", "Intricacy", "Flood", "Fecundity", "Stalking", "Nightwatch", "The Horns of the Altar", "Northing", and "The Waters of Separation". In the opening chapter, "Heaven and Earth in Jest", the narrator describes her connection to the location: > I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge. An anchorite's hermitage is called an anchor-hold; some anchor-holds were simple sheds clamped to the side of a church like a barnacle or a rock. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does, facing the stream of light pouring down. It's a good place to live; there's a lot to think about. In the afterword of the 1999 Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition, Dillard states that the book's other, two-part structure mirrors the two routes to God according to neoplatonic christianity: the via positiva and the via negativa. The first half, the via positiva, beginning with the second chapter, "accumulates the world's goodness and God's." The second half, the via negativa, ends with the chapter "Northing", which Dillard notes is the counterpart of the second chapter, "Seeing". The first and last chapters of the book serve as the introduction and conclusion, respectively. The narrative is composed of vignettes detailing the narrator's wanderings around the creek. In "The Present", the narrator encounters a puppy at a gas station off the highway, and pats its belly while contemplating the view of the nearby mountain range; the reflective act of "petting the puppy" is referred to in several other chapters. In "Stalking", the narrator pursues a group of muskrats in the creek during summer. One of the most famous passages comes from the beginning of the book, when the narrator witnesses a frog being drained and devoured by a giant water bug. ## Style and genre Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a work of creative nonfiction that uses poetic devices such as metaphor, repetition, and inversion to convey the importance of recurrent themes. Although it is often described as a series of essays, Dillard has insisted it is a continuous work, as evidenced by references to events from previous chapters. Although the chapters are separately named—several have also been published separately in magazines and anthologies—she referred to the book in a 1989 interview as a "single sustained nonfiction narrative". Dillard has also resisted the label of "nature writer", especially in regard to Pilgrim. She stated, "There's usually a bit of nature in what I write, but I don't consider myself a nature writer." The book often quotes and alludes to Walden, although Dillard does not explicitly state her interest in Thoreau's work. Critic Donna Mendelson notes that Thoreau's "presence is so potent in her book that Dillard can borrow from [him] both straightforwardly and also humorously." Although the two works are often compared, Pilgrim does not comment upon the social world as Walden does; rather, it is completely rooted in observations of the natural world. Unlike Thoreau, Dillard does not make connections between the history of social and natural aspects, nor does she believe in an ordered universe. Whereas Thoreau refers to the machine-like universe, in which the creator is akin to a master watchmaker, Dillard recognizes the imperfection of creation, in which "something is everywhere and always amiss". In her review for The New York Times, Eudora Welty noted Pilgrim'''s narrator being "the only person in [Dillard's] book, substantially the only one in her world . ... Speaking of the universe very often, she is yet self-surrounded". Dillard seemingly refers to the idea of an "invisible narrator" in the sixth chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; while referring to the "infinite power" of God, the narrator notes that "invisibility is the all-time great 'cover'". Nancy C. Parrish, author of the 1998 book Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers, notes that despite its having been written in the first person, Pilgrim is not necessarily autobiographical. The narrator, "Annie Dillard", therefore becomes a persona through which the author can experience and describe "thoughts and events that the real Annie Dillard had only heard about or studied or imagined." Critic Suzanne Clark also points to the "peculiar evasiveness" of Dillard-the-author, noting that "when we read Annie Dillard, we don't know who is writing. There is a silence in the place where there might be an image of the social self—of personality, character, or ego". While most critics assume that the narrator is female, mostly due to the autobiographical elements of the book and the assumption that the narrator is Dillard herself, Clark questions whether the narrator is male. Stating that Dillard uses "a variety of male voices, male styles" throughout the book, Clark asks, "When Dillard quit writing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the persona of a fifty year old man, did she then begin to write as a woman?" ## Themes ### Religion and nature The book contains a defense of theodicy; that is of God's goodness in the face of evil. The narrator attempts to reconcile the harsh natural world, with its "seemingly horrid mortality," with the belief in a benevolent God. Death is repeatedly mentioned as a natural, although cruel progression: "Evolution", the narrator states, "loves death more than it loves you or me." A passage in the second chapter of the book describes a frog being "sucked dry" by a "giant water bug" as the narrator watches; this necessary cruelty shows order in life and death, no matter how difficult it may be to watch. The narrator especially sees inherent cruelty in the insect world: "Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly ... insects, it seems, gotta do one horrible thing after another. I never ask why of a vulture or a shark, but I ask why of almost every insect I see. More than one insect ... is an assault on all human virtue, all hope of a reasonable god." While she remains drawn to the ultimately repugnant and amoral natural world, she also questions her place in it. The narrator states, "I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow. But I seem to have reached a point where I must draw the line. It looks as though the creek is not buoying me up but dragging me down." Although the book's title mentions pilgrimage, the narrator does not stray far from her home near the creek: the journey is metaphysical. Margaret Loewen Reimer, in one of the first critical studies based on the book, noted that Dillard's treatment of the metaphysical is similar to that of Herman Melville. While "Melville's eyes saw mainly the darkness and the horror" of the natural world, possibly stemming from his New England Puritan roots, Dillard's "sinister" vision of the world comes "more from a horror at the seeming mindlessness of nature's design than from a deeply pervasive sense of evil." Unlike Melville, however, Dillard does not moralize the natural world or seek to find parallels in human cultural acts; focusing largely on observation as well as scientific analysis, Dillard follows the example of Charles Darwin and other naturalists. The "pilgrim" narrator seeks to behold the sacred, which she dedicates herself to finding either by "stalking" or "seeing". At one point, she sees a cedar tree near her house "charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame" as the light hits it; this burning vision, reminiscent of creation's holy "fire", "comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it." Critic Jenny Emery Davidson believes that Dillard's act of "stalking" allows her to rewrite the hunting myth, a popular theme in nature writing which mediates the space between nature and humans. Although a long tradition of male nature writers—including James Fenimore Cooper, Jack London and Richard Nelson—have used this theme as "a symbolic ritual of violence", Dillard "ventures into the terrain of the hunt, employing its rhetoric while also challenging its conventions." ### Seeing and awareness While some critics describe the book as being more devoted to speculation of the divine and natural world than to self-exploration, others approach it in terms of Dillard's attention to self-awareness. For example, the critic Mary Davidson McConahay points to Dillard's Thoreauvian "commitment to awareness". The narrator is self-aware and alert to every detail around her. Pilgrim's second chapter defines two types of seeing: as "verbalization" (active) and as "a letting go" (passive). The narrator refers to the difference between the two methods as "the difference between walking with and without a camera." Whereas the former requires the need to "analyze and pry", the latter only requires rapt attention. The act of seeing is exhaustive and exhausting, as one of the chapters relates: "I look at the water: minnows and shiners. If I am thinking minnows, a carp will fill my brain till I scream. I look at the water's surface: skaters, bubbles, and leaves sliding down. Suddenly my own face, reflected, startles me witless. Those snails have been tracking my face! Finally, with a shuddering wrench of the will, I see clouds, cirrus clouds. I'm dizzy. I fall in. This looking business is risky." Sandra Johnson refers to the structure of the book itself leading to an epiphany of self-awareness, or a "mystical experience"; as the narrator watches a falling maple key, she feels "lost, sunk ... gazing toward Tinker Mountain and feeling the earth reel down". ## Reception and awards The book was a critical and financial success, selling more than 37,000 copies within two months of publication. It went through eight separate printings in the first two years, and the paperback rights were quickly purchased. Dillard was unnerved by the crush of attention; shortly after the book was published, she wrote, "I'm starting to have dreams about Tinker Creek. Lying face down in it, all muddy and dried up and I'm drowning in it." She feared she had "shot my lifetime wad. Pilgrim is not only the wisdom of my 28 years but I think it's the wisdom of my whole life." The initial consensus among reviewers was that it was "an unusual treatise on nature". The book was published soon after her poetry collection Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974, University of Missouri Press). Reviewing both volumes for America, John Breslin noted the similarities between the two: "Even if her first book of poems had not been published simultaneously, the language she uses in Pilgrim would have given her away." The Saturday Evening Post also praised Dillard's poetic ability in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, noting that "the poet in her is everywhere evident in this prose-poem of hers: the reader's attention is caught not only by the freshness of her insights, but by the beauty of her descriptions as well." Melvin Maddocks, a reviewer for Time, noted Dillard's intention of subtle influence: "Reader, beware of this deceptive girl, mouthing her piety about 'the secret of seeing' being 'the pearl of great price,' modestly insisting, 'I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood.' Here is no gentle romantic twirling a buttercup, no graceful inscriber of 365 inspirational prose poems. As she guides the attention to a muskrat, to a monarch butterfly, a heron or a coot, Miss Dillard is stalking the reader as surely as any predator stalks its game." Despite being a bestseller, Pilgrim received little academic attention until more than five years after its publication. Early reviewers Charles Nicol and J. C. Peirce linked Dillard with the transcendentalist movement, comparing her to Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Author and environmentalist Edward Abbey, known as the "Thoreau of the American West", stated that Dillard was the "true heir of the Master". He wrote, "she alone has been able to compose, successfully, in Thoreau's extravagant and transcendental manner." In his 1992 book critic Scott Slovic wrote that Pilgrim at Tinker Creek eventually "catapulted [Dillard] to prominence among contemporary American nonfiction writers—particularly among nature writers—and stimulated a wealth of reviews and a steadily accumulating body of criticism." Gary McIlroy believed that Dillard's work is distinctive for its "vibrant rediscovery of the woods. [She] studies the wildest remnants of the Virginia woodlands, stirring all the dark and promising mysteries of the American frontier." In a 2021 interview with Ezra Klein, author Ted Chiang was asked for his favourite religious text and said that he "can’t really point to a conventional religious text as an atheist" but that reading Pilgrim "gave me maybe the closest that I’m likely to get to understanding a kind of religious ecstasy". Pilgrim at Tinker Creek'' won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction in 1975, when Dillard was 29 years old. The jury noted in its nomination that "Miss Dillard is an expert observer in whom science has not etiolated a sense of awe ... Her book is a blend of observation and introspection, mystery and knowledge. We unanimously recommend it for the prize." Since its initial publication, portions of the book have been anthologized in over thirty collections. Subsequent editions included those published by Bantam Books (1975) and Harper Colophon (1985; 1988). The Harper Perennial 25th-Anniversary edition, which included an afterword by the author, was released in 1999. The first UK edition was released in 1976. The book has been translated into many languages throughout the years, including Swedish, Japanese, French, and German. In 1998, it was listed in Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction Books, both on the board's and the reader's lists.

If Day

Simulated Nazi invasion of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1942

If Day (French: "Si un jour", "If one day") was a simulated Nazi German invasion and occupation of the Canadian city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and surrounding areas on 19 February 1942, during the Second World War. It was organized as a war bond promotion by the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan organization, which was led by prominent Winnipeg businessman J. D. Perrin. The event was the largest military exercise in Winnipeg to that point. If Day included a staged firefight between Canadian troops and volunteers dressed as German soldiers, the internment of prominent politicians, the imposition of Nazi rule, and a parade. The event was a fundraiser for the war effort: over \$3 million was collected in Winnipeg on that day. Organizers believed that the fear induced by the event would help increase fundraising objectives. It was the subject of a 2006 documentary, and was included in Guy Maddin's film My Winnipeg. ## Background If Day was an elaborate campaign to promote the purchase of Victory Bonds. These bonds, which were loans to the government to allow for increased war spending, were sold to individuals and corporations throughout Canada. If Day was the second Victory Loan campaign of the Second World War. The campaign began on 16 February 1942, and continued until 9 March. Manitoba's fundraising target was \$45 million (\$620 million in 2011 dollars), including \$24.5 million from Winnipeg. The national campaign planned to light "Beacon Fires of Freedom" in communities across the country, but Winnipeg's February weather was not conducive to this idea, leading to the Greater Winnipeg Victory Loan committee, a regional branch of the National War Finance Committee, under chairman John Draper Perrin, to opt for a different approach. The organizers believed that bringing the war (or, rather, a simulation thereof) to people's homes would result in a change of attitude among those not directly affected by the war. The committee drew up a map of Manitoba, which was divided into 45 sections, each representing \$1 million of their fundraising target. As money came in from those selling Victory Bonds, the sections were "reclaimed" from the Nazi invaders. The map was posted at the corner of Portage and Main, the city's central intersection. The campaign was publicized in local newspapers for a few days before the event, although the "invasion" took many citizens by surprise. To prevent a rush to emergency shelters, residents of neighbouring northern Minnesota were also warned because radio broadcasts dramatizing the event could be received in that area. Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft painted to look like German fighter planes flew over the city on 18 February 1942. Selkirk, a small town northeast of Winnipeg, held its own fundraising simulation, a one-hour blackout and mock bombing, on 18 February 1942 in preparation for the main If Day event. ## Events The simulation included 3,500 Canadian Army members, representing all of Winnipeg's units, making it the largest military exercise in Winnipeg to that point. The defending forces were commanded by Colonels E. A. Pridham and D. S. McKay. Troops were drawn from the Fifth Field Regiment, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, the Winnipeg Grenadiers, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, and a number of reserve and civilian groups. The 'Nazi' troops were volunteers from the Young Men's Board of Trade, using uniforms rented from Hollywood and with painted sabre scars on their faces. They were commanded by Erich von Neurenberg. Approximately \$3,000 was spent on the event. 'Nazi' patrols in the city began before 5:30 am on 19 February. A radio announcer was detained and his microphone commandeered for radio broadcasts, beginning at 5:45 am. 'Nazi' troops assembled on the west side of the city half an hour after the first patrols. Canadian troops were massed at Fort Osborne barracks and the Minto and McGregor armouries at 6:30 am, and at 7:00 am air-raid sirens were sounded and a blackout ordered in preparation for the invasion. The aerial blitzkrieg began before 7 am with mock bombings. Beginning at 7:03 am, troops started their simulated attack on the city, which was defended by a small group of active and reserve troops assisted by local community groups. The defenders formed a perimeter around the industrial and downtown areas of the city, approximately 5 kilometres (3 mi) from City Hall, retreating to a 3-kilometre (2 mi) perimeter at 7:45. The firefight included large-scale troop movements and the simulated destruction of major bridges – coal dust and dynamite were used to create explosions. Nine troop formations held three positions each during the tightly scripted invasion sequence; they were directed via telephone (one line per formation) and flash-lamp signals from the headquarters established at the Chamber of Commerce building. The defensive pattern employed was similar to that used during the First World War in Paris to conduct soldiers to the front. Light tanks were stationed at road and rail junctions as fighting intensified. Thirty anti-aircraft vehicles fired blanks at fighter planes overhead, assisted by anti-aircraft gunners on buildings downtown. The first mock casualty was reported at 8:00 am. Dressing stations were set up at strategic points to treat the mock casualties; they also treated the two real casualties of the event – a soldier who sprained his ankle, and a woman who cut her thumb preparing toast during the early-morning blackout. At 9:30 am, the defenders surrendered to the 'Nazis' and withdrew to the downtown muster point, and the city was occupied. The fake Nazis began a widespread harassment campaign, sending armed troops throughout the city. A tank was driven down Portage Avenue, one of the main streets of the downtown area. Some people were taken to an internment camp at Lower Fort Garry; those interned included prominent local politicians like Premier John Bracken (arrested with several members of his cabinet at a caucus meeting), Mayor John Queen, Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba Roland Fairbairn McWilliams, and visiting Norwegian ambassador to the United States . One council member, Dan McClean, escaped but was recaptured after an intensive search. Chief of Police George Smith avoided capture because he was dining out when soldiers arrived at his office. The Union Flag at Lower Fort Garry was replaced with the swastika. The city was renamed "Himmlerstadt", and Main Street was termed "Hitlerstrasse". Erich von Neurenberg was installed as gauleiter (provincial leader); he was assisted by George Waight, who acted as the local Gestapo chief. Their stated purpose was to assist Hitler in his plans to take advantage of Canada's relatively low population density by colonizing the country. Von Neurenberg issued the following decree, which was posted throughout the city: > 1. This territory is now a part of the Greater Reich and under the jurisdiction of Col. Erich Von Neuremburg, Gauleiter of the Fuehrer. > 2. No civilians will be permitted on the streets between 9:30 pm and daybreak. > 3. All public places are out of bounds to civilians, and not more than 8 persons can gather at one time in any place. > 4. Every householder must provide billeting for 5 soldiers. > 5. All organizations of a military, semi-military or fraternal nature are hereby disbanded and banned. Girl Guide, Boy Scout and similar youth organizations will remain in existence but under direction of the Gauleiter and Storm troops. > 6. All owners of motor cars, trucks and buses must register same at Occupation Headquarters where they will be taken over by the Army of Occupation. > 7. Each farmer must immediately report all stocks of grain and livestock and no farm produce may be sold except through the office of the Kommandant of supplies in Winnipeg. He may not keep any for his own consumption but must buy it back through the Central Authority in Winnipeg. > 8. All national emblems excluding the Swastika must be immediately destroyed. > 9. Each inhabitant will be furnished with a ration card, and food and clothing may only be purchased on presentation of this card. > 10. The following offences will result in death without trial > 1. Attempting to organize resistance against the Army of Occupation > 2. Entering or leaving the province without permission. > 3. Failure to report all goods possessed when ordered to do so. > 4. Possession of firearms. > > NO ONE WILL ACT, SPEAK OR THINK CONTRARY TO OUR DECREES. Notices were posted on churches forbidding worship services, and priests who objected were arrested. Buses were stopped and their passengers searched by armed troops. The Winnipeg Tribune was renamed Das Winnipeger Lügenblatt ("The Winnipeg Lies-sheet"), a 'Nazi' publication featuring heavily censored columns and a front page written almost entirely in German. One satirical story noted that "this is a great day for Manitoba ...The Nazis, like Der Fuehrer, are patient, kind and tolerant, but THEIR PATIENCE IS RAPIDLY EXHAUSTED BECOMING", while another included an "official joke", approved by the German authorities, at which all readers were ordered to laugh or be imprisoned. Henry Weppler, a newspaper seller for the Winnipeg Free Press, was attacked and his papers ripped up. The Winnipeg Free Press featured a front-page story about the "invasion", describing in great detail the devastation caused by the Nazis in Winnipeg. Books were burned in front of the main Carnegie branch of the Winnipeg Public Library (the books had been pre-selected for incineration as damaged or outdated). Soldiers entered the cafeteria at Great West Life and stole lunches from workers. They seized buffalo coats from the police station and wore them throughout the day, as the temperature was below −8 °C (18 °F). At one local elementary school, the principal was arrested and replaced with a 'Nazi' educator dedicated to teaching the "Nazi Truth"; special lessons were prepared for high-school students throughout the city. Some stores and homes were looted by the fake troops. Canadian currency was replaced with fake German Reichsmarks, the only propaganda notes that Canada created during the war. The day ended at 5:30 pm with a ceremonial release of prisoners, a parade, and speeches from the released dignitaries. Members of the organizing committee and local businesspeople marched down Portage Avenue with banners reading "It MUST Not Happen Here!" and "Buy Victory Bonds". Following the parade, a banquet was held at the Hudson's Bay Company building. Ambassador de Morgenstierne spoke about his experiences with If Day and in Norway, suggesting that the "make-believe Nazi occupation of [Winnipeg] was an authentic glimpse of German behavior in German-ridden Europe". Surrounding towns were also affected by the invasion: for example, in Neepawa 'Nazi' soldiers confronted citizens in the streets. Virden was renamed "Virdenberg". A mock attack was planned for strategic targets in Brandon. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a program called "Swastika over Canada" on the radio throughout the province, along with military music and extracts of Hitler's speeches; students were dismissed from school early to listen. ## Effects If Day pushed Victory Bond sales well over Greater Winnipeg's goal, and brought the tactic to the attention of people throughout North America. Life Magazine ran a pictorial spread of the If Day activities in Winnipeg and smaller centres across Manitoba, photographed by William Shrout. Reporters from several American publications, including Newsweek, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor, were also present; cameraman Lucien Roy shot newsreel footage for BBC News. Newspapers in New Zealand included stories about the event. An estimated 40 million people worldwide saw coverage. If Day raised \$3.2 million for the Victory Loan campaign, which was the city's largest single-day total. Winnipeg passed its \$24 million Victory Loan quota on 24 February, largely because of If Day. The campaign's provincial total was \$60 million, well above its target quota of \$45 million. It raised approximately \$2 billion nationwide for the war effort, and If Day was considered one of the most successful fundraising events of the nationwide drive. The army had expected a significant increase in recruits on If Day, but it failed to end the long-term decline in recruitment numbers: only 23 people enlisted in Winnipeg, compared to an average of 36 per day for the first half of February. If Day was successful enough to spark imitations in other communities. The US government contacted the organizing committee for details of the event. A smaller-scale invasion was staged in Vancouver, using promotional materials from the Winnipeg campaign. In 2006, a television documentary of the event was made by Aaron Floresco for CTV's local series Manitoba Moments. It incorporates newsreel footage as well as interviews of historians and participants. Filmmaker Guy Maddin included a brief newsreel clip of If Day in his film My Winnipeg. ## See also - Nazi plans for North America

Jimi Hendrix

American guitarist (1942–1970)

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music." Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his first and only number one album. The world's highest-paid performer, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970. Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began." Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland, among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth-greatest artist of all time. ## Ancestry and childhood Hendrix is of African American and Irish descent. His paternal grandfather, Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix, was born in 1866 from an extramarital affair between a woman named Fanny and a grain merchant from Urbana, Ohio, or Illinois, one of the wealthiest men in the area at that time. Hendrix's paternal grandmother, Zenora "Nora" Rose Moore, was a former dancer and vaudeville performer. Hendrix and Moore relocated to Vancouver, where they had a son they named James Allen Hendrix on June 10, 1919; the family called him "Al". In 1941, after moving to Seattle, Washington, Al met Lucille Jeter (1925–1958) at a dance; they married on March 31, 1942. Lucille's father (Jimi's maternal grandfather) was Preston Jeter (born 1875), whose mother was born in similar circumstances as Bertran Philander Ross Hendrix. Lucille's mother, née Clarice Lawson, had African American ancestors who had been enslaved people. Al, who had been drafted by the US Army to serve in World War II, left to begin his basic training three days after the wedding. Johnny Allen Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942, in Seattle; he was the first of Lucille's five children. In 1946, Johnny's parents changed his name to James Marshall Hendrix, in honor of Al and his late brother Leon Marshall. Stationed in Alabama at the time of Hendrix's birth, Al was denied the standard military furlough afforded servicemen for childbirth; his commanding officer placed him in the stockade to prevent him from going AWOL to see his infant son in Seattle. He spent two months locked up without trial, and while in the stockade received a telegram announcing his son's birth. During Al's three-year absence, Lucille struggled to raise their son. When Al was away, Hendrix was mostly cared for by family members and friends, especially Lucille's sister Delores Hall and her friend Dorothy Harding. Al received an honorable discharge from the US Army on September 1, 1945. Two months later, unable to find Lucille, Al went to the Berkeley, California, home of a family friend named Mrs. Champ, who had taken care of and attempted to adopt Hendrix; this is where Al saw his son for the first time. After returning from service, Al reunited with Lucille, but his inability to find steady work left the family impoverished. They both struggled with alcohol, and often fought when intoxicated. The violence sometimes drove Hendrix to withdraw and hide in a closet in their home. His relationship with his brother Leon (born 1948) was close but precarious; with Leon in and out of foster care, they lived with an almost constant threat of fraternal separation. In addition to Leon, Hendrix had three younger siblings: Joseph, born in 1949, Kathy in 1950, and Pamela, 1951, all of whom Al and Lucille gave up to foster care and adoption. The family frequently moved, staying in cheap hotels and apartments around Seattle. On occasion, family members would take Hendrix to Vancouver, Canada to stay at his grandmother's. A shy and sensitive boy, he was deeply affected by his life experiences. In later years, he confided to a girlfriend that he had been the victim of sexual abuse by a man in uniform. On December 17, 1951, when Hendrix was nine years old, his parents divorced; the court granted Al custody of him and Leon. ### First instruments At Horace Mann Elementary School in Seattle during the mid-1950s, Hendrix's habit of carrying a broom with him to emulate a guitar gained the attention of the school's social worker. After more than a year of his clinging to a broom like a security blanket, she wrote a letter requesting school funding intended for underprivileged children, insisting that leaving him without a guitar might result in psychological damage. Her efforts failed, and Al refused to buy him a guitar. In 1957, while helping his father with a side-job, Hendrix found a ukulele among the garbage they were removing from an older woman's home. She told him that he could keep the instrument, which had only one string. Learning by ear, he played single notes, following along to Elvis Presley songs, particularly "Hound Dog". By the age of 33, Hendrix's mother Lucille had developed cirrhosis of the liver, and on February 2, 1958, she died when her spleen ruptured. Al refused to take James and Leon to attend their mother's funeral; he instead gave them shots of whiskey and instructed them that was how men should deal with loss. In 1958, Hendrix completed his studies at Washington Junior High School and began attending, but did not graduate from, Garfield High School. In mid-1958, at age 15, Hendrix acquired his first acoustic guitar, for \$5 (). He played for hours daily, watching others and learning from more experienced guitarists, and listening to blues artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, and Robert Johnson. The first tune Hendrix learned to play was the television theme "Peter Gunn". Around that time, Hendrix jammed with boyhood friend Sammy Drain and his keyboard-playing brother. In 1959, attending a concert by Hank Ballard & the Midnighters in Seattle, Hendrix met the group's guitarist Billy Davis. Davis showed him some guitar licks and got him a short gig with the Midnighters. The two remained friends until Hendrix's death in 1970. Soon after he acquired the acoustic guitar, Hendrix formed his first band, the Velvetones. Without an electric guitar, he could barely be heard over the sound of the group. After about three months, he realized that he needed an electric guitar. In mid-1959, his father relented and bought him a white Supro Ozark. Hendrix's first gig was with an unnamed band in the Jaffe Room of Seattle's Temple De Hirsch, but they fired him between sets for showing off. He joined the Rocking Kings, which played professionally at venues such as the Birdland club. When his guitar was stolen after he left it backstage overnight, Al bought him a red Silvertone Danelectro. ## Military service Before Hendrix was 19 years old, law authorities had twice caught him riding in stolen cars. Given a choice between prison or joining the Army, he chose the latter and enlisted on May 31, 1961. After completing eight weeks of basic training at Fort Ord, California, he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He arrived on November 8, and soon afterward he wrote to his father: "There's nothing but physical training and harassment here for two weeks, then when you go to jump school ... you get hell. They work you to death, fussing and fighting." In his next letter home, Hendrix, who had left his guitar in Seattle at the home of his girlfriend Betty Jean Morgan, asked his father to send it to him as soon as possible, stating: "I really need it now." His father obliged and sent the red Silvertone Danelectro on which Hendrix had hand-painted the words "Betty Jean" to Fort Campbell. His apparent obsession with the instrument contributed to his neglect of his duties, which led to taunting and physical abuse from his peers, who at least once hid the guitar from him until he had begged for its return. In November 1961, fellow serviceman Billy Cox walked past an army club and heard Hendrix playing. Impressed by Hendrix's technique, which Cox described as a combination of "John Lee Hooker and Beethoven", Cox borrowed a bass guitar and the two jammed. Within weeks, they began performing at base clubs on the weekends with other musicians in a loosely organized band, the Casuals. Hendrix completed his paratrooper training and, on January 11, 1962, Major General Charles W. G. Rich awarded him the prestigious Screaming Eagles patch. By February, his personal conduct had begun to draw criticism from his superiors. They labeled him an unqualified marksman and often caught him napping while on duty and failing to report for bed checks. On May 24, Hendrix's platoon sergeant, James C. Spears, filed a report in which he stated: "He has no interest whatsoever in the Army ... It is my opinion that Private Hendrix will never come up to the standards required of a soldier. I feel that the military service will benefit if he is discharged as soon as possible." On June 29, 1962, Hendrix was granted a general discharge under honorable conditions. Hendrix later spoke of his dislike of the army and that he had received a medical discharge after breaking his ankle during his 26th parachute jump, but no Army records have been produced that indicate that he received or was discharged for any injuries. ## Career ### Early years In September 1962, after Cox was discharged from the Army, he and Hendrix moved about 20 miles (32 km) across the state line from Fort Campbell to Clarksville, Tennessee, and formed a band, the King Kasuals. In Seattle, Hendrix saw Butch Snipes play with his teeth and now the Kasuals' second guitarist, Alphonso "Baby Boo" Young, was performing this guitar gimmick. Not to be upstaged, Hendrix also learned to play in this way. He later explained: "The idea of doing that came to me ... in Tennessee. Down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There's a trail of broken teeth all over the stage." Although they began playing low-paying gigs at obscure venues, the band eventually moved to Nashville's Jefferson Street, which was the traditional heart of the city's black community and home to a thriving rhythm and blues music scene. They earned a brief residency playing at a popular venue in town, the Club del Morocco, and for the next two years Hendrix made a living performing at a circuit of venues throughout the South that were affiliated with the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), widely known as the chitlin' circuit. In addition to playing in his own band, Hendrix performed as a backing musician for various soul, R&B, and blues musicians, including Wilson Pickett, Slim Harpo, Sam Cooke, Ike & Tina Turner and Jackie Wilson. In January 1964, feeling he had outgrown the circuit artistically, and frustrated by having to follow the rules of bandleaders, Hendrix decided to venture out on his own. He moved into the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, where he befriended Lithofayne Pridgon, known as "Faye", who became his girlfriend. A Harlem native with connections throughout the area's music scene, Pridgon provided him with shelter, support, and encouragement. Hendrix also met the Allen twins, Arthur and Albert. In February 1964, Hendrix won first prize in the Apollo Theater amateur contest. Hoping to secure a career opportunity, he played the Harlem club circuit and sat in with various bands. At the recommendation of a former associate of Joe Tex, Ronnie Isley granted Hendrix an audition that led to an offer to become the guitarist with the Isley Brothers' backing band, the I.B. Specials, which he readily accepted. ### First recordings In March 1964, Hendrix recorded the two-part single "Testify" with the Isley Brothers. Released in June, it failed to chart. In May, he provided guitar instrumentation for the Don Covay song, "Mercy Mercy". Issued in August by Rosemart Records and distributed by Atlantic, the track reached number 35 on the Billboard chart. Hendrix toured with the Isleys during much of 1964, but near the end of October, after growing tired of playing the same set every night, he left the band. Soon afterward, Hendrix joined Little Richard's touring band, the Upsetters. During a stop in Los Angeles in February 1965, he recorded his first and only single with Richard, "I Don't Know What You Got (But It's Got Me)", written by Don Covay and released by Vee-Jay Records. Richard's popularity was waning at the time, and the single peaked at number 92, where it remained for one week before dropping off the chart. Hendrix met singer Rosa Lee Brooks while staying at the Wilcox Hotel in Hollywood, and she invited him to participate in a recording session for her single, which included the Arthur Lee penned "My Diary" as the A-side, and "Utee" as the B-side. Hendrix played guitar on both tracks, which also included background vocals by Lee. The single failed to chart, but Hendrix and Lee began a friendship that lasted several years; Hendrix later became an ardent supporter of Lee's band, Love. In July 1965, Hendrix made his first television appearance on Nashville's Channel 5 Night Train. Performing in Little Richard's ensemble band, he backed up vocalists Buddy and Stacy on "Shotgun". The video recording of the show marks the earliest known footage of Hendrix performing. Richard and Hendrix often clashed over tardiness, wardrobe, and Hendrix's stage antics, and in late July, Richard's brother Robert fired him. On July 27, Hendrix signed his first recording contract with Juggy Murray at Sue Records and Copa Management. He then briefly rejoined the Isley Brothers, and recorded a second single with them, "Move Over and Let Me Dance" backed with "Have You Ever Been Disappointed". Later that year, he joined a New York-based R&B band, Curtis Knight and the Squires, after meeting Knight in the lobby of a hotel where both men were staying. Hendrix performed with them for eight months. In October 1965, he and Knight recorded the single, "How Would You Feel" backed with "Welcome Home". Despite his two-year contract with Sue, Hendrix signed a three-year recording contract with entrepreneur Ed Chalpin on October 15. While the relationship with Chalpin was short-lived, his contract remained in force, which later caused legal and career problems for Hendrix. During his time with Knight, Hendrix briefly toured with Joey Dee and the Starliters, and worked with King Curtis on several recordings including Ray Sharpe's two-part single, "Help Me". Hendrix earned his first composer credits for two instrumentals, "Hornets Nest" and "Knock Yourself Out", released as a Curtis Knight and the Squires single in 1966. Feeling restricted by his experiences as an R&B sideman, Hendrix moved in 1966 to New York City's Greenwich Village, which had a vibrant and diverse music scene. There, he was offered a residency at the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street and formed his own band that June, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, which included future Spirit guitarist Randy California. The Blue Flames played at several clubs in New York and Hendrix began developing his guitar style and material that he would soon use with the Experience. In September, they gave some of their last concerts at the Cafe Au Go Go in Manhattan, as the backing group for a singer and guitarist then billed as John Hammond. ### The Jimi Hendrix Experience By May 1966, Hendrix was struggling to earn a living wage playing the R&B circuit, so he briefly rejoined Curtis Knight and the Squires for an engagement at one of New York City's most popular nightspots, the Cheetah Club. During a performance, Linda Keith, the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, noticed Hendrix and was "mesmerised" by his playing. She invited him to join her for a drink, and the two became friends. While Hendrix was playing as Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, Keith recommended him to Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and producer Seymour Stein. They failed to see Hendrix's musical potential, and rejected him. Keith referred him to Chas Chandler, who was leaving the Animals and was interested in managing and producing artists. Chandler saw Hendrix play in Cafe Wha?, a Greenwich Village, New York City nightclub. Chandler liked the Billy Roberts song "Hey Joe", and was convinced he could create a hit single with the right artist. Impressed with Hendrix's version of the song, he brought him to London on September 24, 1966, and signed him to a management and production contract with himself and ex-Animals manager Michael Jeffery. That night, Hendrix gave an impromptu solo performance at The Scotch of St James, and began a relationship with Kathy Etchingham that lasted for two and a half years. Following Hendrix's arrival in London, Chandler began recruiting members for a band designed to highlight his talents, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Hendrix met guitarist Noel Redding at an audition for the New Animals, where Redding's knowledge of blues progressions impressed Hendrix, who stated that he also liked Redding's hairstyle. Chandler asked Redding if he wanted to play bass guitar in Hendrix's band; Redding agreed. Chandler began looking for a drummer and soon after contacted Mitch Mitchell through a mutual friend. Mitchell, who had recently been fired from Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, participated in a rehearsal with Redding and Hendrix where they found common ground in their shared interest in rhythm and blues. When Chandler phoned Mitchell later that day to offer him the position, he readily accepted. Chandler also convinced Hendrix to change the spelling of his first name from Jimmy to the more exotic Jimi. On October 1, 1966, Chandler brought Hendrix to the London Polytechnic at Regent Street, where Cream was scheduled to perform, and where Hendrix and guitarist Eric Clapton met. Clapton later said: "He asked if he could play a couple of numbers. I said, 'Of course', but I had a funny feeling about him." Halfway through Cream's set, Hendrix took the stage and performed a frantic version of the Howlin' Wolf song "Killing Floor". In 1989, Clapton described the performance: "He played just about every style you could think of, and not in a flashy way. I mean he did a few of his tricks, like playing with his teeth and behind his back, but it wasn't in an upstaging sense at all, and that was it ... He walked off, and my life was never the same again". #### UK success In mid-October 1966, Chandler arranged an engagement for the Experience as Johnny Hallyday's supporting act during a brief tour of France. Thus, the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed their first show on October 13, 1966, at the Novelty in Evreux. Their enthusiastically received 15-minute performance at the Olympia theatre in Paris on October 18 marks the earliest known recording of the band. In late October, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, managers of the Who, signed the Experience to their newly formed label, Track Records, and the group recorded their first song, "Hey Joe", on October 23. "Stone Free", which was Hendrix's first songwriting effort after arriving in England, was recorded on November 2. In mid-November, they performed at the Bag O'Nails nightclub in London, with Clapton, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, and Kevin Ayers in attendance. Ayers described the crowd's reaction as stunned disbelief: "All the stars were there, and I heard serious comments, you know 'shit', 'Jesus', 'damn' and other words worse than that." The performance earned Hendrix his first interview, published in Record Mirror with the headline: "Mr. Phenomenon". "Now hear this ... we predict that [Hendrix] is going to whirl around the business like a tornado", wrote Bill Harry, who asked the rhetorical question: "Is that full, big, swinging sound really being created by only three people?" Hendrix said: "We don't want to be classed in any category ... If it must have a tag, I'd like it to be called, 'Free Feeling'. It's a mixture of rock, freak-out, rave and blues". Through a distribution deal with Polydor Records, the Experience's first single, "Hey Joe", backed with "Stone Free", was released on December 16, 1966. After appearances on the UK television shows Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops, "Hey Joe" entered the UK charts on December 29 and peaked at number six. Further success came in March 1967 with the UK number three hit "Purple Haze", and in May with "The Wind Cries Mary", which remained on the UK charts for eleven weeks, peaking at number six. On March 12, 1967, he performed at the Troutbeck Hotel, Ilkley, West Yorkshire, where, after about 900 people turned up (the hotel was licensed for 250) the local police stopped the gig due to safety concerns. On March 31, 1967, while the Experience waited to perform at the London Astoria, Hendrix and Chandler discussed ways in which they could increase the band's media exposure. When Chandler asked journalist Keith Altham for advice, Altham suggested that they needed to do something more dramatic than the stage show of the Who, which involved the smashing of instruments. Hendrix joked: "Maybe I can smash up an elephant", to which Altham replied: "Well, it's a pity you can't set fire to your guitar". Chandler then asked road manager Gerry Stickells to procure some lighter fluid. During the show, Hendrix gave an especially dynamic performance before setting his guitar on fire at the end of a 45-minute set. In the wake of the stunt, members of London's press labeled Hendrix the "Black Elvis" and the "Wild Man of Borneo". An enduring urban legend in the UK maintains that a possible explanation for the feral parakeets that have appeared in Great Britain since the mid-20th century may derive from a single pair of the birds that were released by Hendrix on Carnaby Street in the 1960s. According to a study, however, which mapped historical news reports of sightings of the birds, the myth is not true. #### Are You Experienced After the UK chart success of their first two singles, "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze", the Experience began assembling material for a full-length LP. In London, recording began at De Lane Lea Studios, and later moved to the prestigious Olympic Studios. The album, Are You Experienced, features a diversity of musical styles, including blues tracks such as "Red House" and the R&B song "Remember". It also included the experimental science fiction piece, "Third Stone from the Sun" and the post-modern soundscapes of the title track, with prominent backwards guitar and drums. "I Don't Live Today" served as a medium for Hendrix's guitar feedback improvisation and "Fire" was driven by Mitchell's drumming. Released in the UK on May 12, 1967, Are You Experienced spent 33 weeks on the charts, peaking at number two. It was prevented from reaching the top spot by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. On June 4, 1967, Hendrix opened a show at the Saville Theatre in London with his rendition of Sgt. Pepper's title track, which was released just three days previous. Beatles manager Brian Epstein owned the Saville at the time, and both George Harrison and Paul McCartney attended the performance. McCartney described the moment: "The curtains flew back and he came walking forward playing 'Sgt. Pepper'. It's a pretty major compliment in anyone's book. I put that down as one of the great honors of my career." Released in the US on August 23 by Reprise Records, Are You Experienced reached number five on the Billboard 200. In 1989, Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World, described Are You Experienced as "the album that shook the world ... leaving it forever changed". In 2005, Rolling Stone called the double-platinum LP Hendrix's "epochal debut", and they ranked it the 15th greatest album of all time, noting his "exploitation of amp howl", and characterizing his guitar playing as "incendiary ... historic in itself". #### Monterey Pop Festival Although popular in Europe at the time, the Experience's first US single, "Hey Joe", failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100 chart upon its release on May 1, 1967. Their fortunes improved when McCartney recommended them to the organizers of the Monterey Pop Festival. He insisted that the event would be incomplete without Hendrix, whom he called "an absolute ace on the guitar". McCartney agreed to join the board of organizers on the condition that the Experience perform at the festival in mid-June. On June 18, 1967, introduced by Brian Jones as "the most exciting performer [he had] ever heard", Hendrix opened with a fast arrangement of Howlin' Wolf's song "Killing Floor", wearing what author Keith Shadwick described as "clothes as exotic as any on display elsewhere". Shadwick wrote: "[Hendrix] was not only something utterly new musically, but an entirely original vision of what a black American entertainer should and could look like." The Experience went on to perform renditions of "Hey Joe", B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", Chip Taylor's "Wild Thing", and Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", and four original compositions: "Foxy Lady", "Can You See Me", "The Wind Cries Mary", and "Purple Haze". The set ended with Hendrix destroying his guitar and tossing pieces of it out to the audience. Rolling Stone's Alex Vadukul wrote: > When Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival he created one of rock's most perfect moments. Standing in the front row of that concert was a 17-year-old boy named Ed Caraeff. Caraeff had never seen Hendrix before nor heard his music, but he had a camera with him and there was one shot left in his roll of film. As Hendrix lit his guitar, Caraeff took a final photo. It would become one of the most famous images in rock and roll. Caraeff stood on a chair next to the edge of the stage and took four monochrome pictures of Hendrix burning his guitar. Caraeff was close enough to the fire that he had to use his camera to protect his face from the heat. Rolling Stone later colorized the image, matching it with other pictures taken at the festival before using the shot for a 1987 magazine cover. According to author Gail Buckland, the final frame of "Hendrix kneeling in front of his burning guitar, hands raised, is one of the most famous images in rock". Author and historian Matthew C. Whitaker wrote that "Hendrix's burning of his guitar became an iconic image in rock history and brought him national attention". The Los Angeles Times asserted that, upon leaving the stage, Hendrix "graduated from rumor to legend". Author John McDermott wrote that "Hendrix left the Monterey audience stunned and in disbelief at what they'd just heard and seen". According to Hendrix: "I decided to destroy my guitar at the end of a song as a sacrifice. You sacrifice things you love. I love my guitar." The performance was filmed by D. A. Pennebaker, and included in the concert documentary Monterey Pop, which helped Hendrix gain popularity with the US public. After the festival, the Experience was booked for five concerts at Bill Graham's Fillmore, with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Jefferson Airplane. The Experience outperformed Jefferson Airplane during the first two nights, and replaced them at the top of the bill on the fifth. Following their successful West Coast introduction, which included a free open-air concert at Golden Gate Park and a concert at the Whisky a Go Go, the Experience was booked as the opening act for the first American tour of the Monkees. The Monkees requested Hendrix as a supporting act because they were fans, but their young audience disliked the Experience, who left the tour after six shows. Chandler later said he engineered the tour to gain publicity for Hendrix. #### Axis: Bold as Love The second Experience album, Axis: Bold as Love, opens with the track "EXP", which uses microphonic and harmonic feedback in a new, creative fashion. It also showcased an experimental stereo panning effect in which sounds emanating from Hendrix's guitar move through the stereo image, revolving around the listener. The piece reflected his growing interest in science fiction and outer space. He composed the album's title track and finale around two verses and two choruses, during which he pairs emotions with personas, comparing them to colors. The song's coda features the first recording of stereo phasing. Shadwick described the composition as "possibly the most ambitious piece on Axis, the extravagant metaphors of the lyrics suggesting a growing confidence" in Hendrix's songwriting. His guitar playing throughout the song is marked by chordal arpeggios and contrapuntal motion, with tremolo-picked partial chords providing the musical foundation for the chorus, which culminates in what musicologist Andy Aledort described as "simply one of the greatest electric guitar solos ever played". The track fades out on tremolo-picked 32nd note double stops. The scheduled release date for Axis was almost delayed when Hendrix lost the master tape of side one of the LP, leaving it in the back seat of a London taxi. With the deadline looming, Hendrix, Chandler, and engineer Eddie Kramer remixed most of side one in a single overnight session, but they could not match the quality of the lost mix of "If 6 Was 9". Redding had a tape recording of this mix, which had to be smoothed out with an iron as it had gotten wrinkled. During the verses, Hendrix doubled his singing with a guitar line which he played one octave lower than his vocals. Hendrix voiced his disappointment about having re-mixed the album so quickly, and he felt that it could have been better had they been given more time. Axis featured psychedelic cover art that depicts Hendrix and the Experience as various avatars of Vishnu, incorporating a painting of them by Roger Law, from a photo-portrait by Karl Ferris. The painting was then superimposed on a copy of a mass-produced religious poster. Hendrix stated that the cover, which Track spent \$5,000 producing, would have been more appropriate had it highlighted his American Indian heritage. He said: "You got it wrong ... I'm not that kind of Indian." Track released the album in the UK on December 1, 1967, where it peaked at number five, spending 16 weeks on the charts. In February 1968, Axis: Bold as Love reached number three in the US. While author and journalist Richie Unterberger described Axis as the least impressive Experience album, according to author Peter Doggett, the release "heralded a new subtlety in Hendrix's work". Mitchell said: "Axis was the first time that it became apparent that Jimi was pretty good working behind the mixing board, as well as playing, and had some positive ideas of how he wanted things recorded. It could have been the start of any potential conflict between him and Chas in the studio." #### Electric Ladyland Recording for the Experience's third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, began as early as December 20, 1967, at Olympic Studios. Several songs were attempted; however, in April 1968, the Experience, with Chandler as producer and engineers Eddie Kramer and Gary Kellgren, moved the sessions to the newly opened Record Plant Studios in New York. As the sessions progressed, Chandler became increasingly frustrated with Hendrix's perfectionism and his demands for repeated takes. Hendrix also allowed numerous friends and guests to join them in the studio, which contributed to a chaotic and crowded environment in the control room and led Chandler to sever his professional relationship with Hendrix. Redding later recalled: "There were tons of people in the studio; you couldn't move. It was a party, not a session." Redding, who had formed his own band in mid-1968, Fat Mattress, found it increasingly difficult to fulfill his commitments with the Experience, so Hendrix played many of the bass parts on Electric Ladyland. The album's cover stated that it was "produced and directed by Jimi Hendrix". During the Electric Ladyland recording sessions, Hendrix began experimenting with other combinations of musicians, including Jefferson Airplane's Jack Casady and Traffic's Steve Winwood, who played bass and organ, respectively, on the 15-minute slow-blues jam, "Voodoo Chile". During the album's production, Hendrix appeared at an impromptu jam with B.B. King, Al Kooper, and Elvin Bishop. Electric Ladyland was released on October 25, and by mid-November it had reached number one in the US, spending two weeks at the top spot. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his only number one album. It peaked at number six in the UK, spending 12 weeks on the chart. Electric Ladyland included Hendrix's cover of a Bob Dylan song, "All Along the Watchtower", which became Hendrix's highest-selling single and his only US top 40 hit, peaking at number 20; the single reached number five in the UK. "Burning of the Midnight Lamp", his first recorded song to feature a wah-wah pedal, was added to the album. It was originally released as his fourth single in the UK in August 1967 and reached number 18 on the charts. In 1989, Noe Goldwasser, the founding editor of Guitar World, described Electric Ladyland as "Hendrix's masterpiece". According to author Michael Heatley, "most critics agree" that the album is "the fullest realization of Jimi's far-reaching ambitions." In 2004, author Peter Doggett wrote: "For pure experimental genius, melodic flair, conceptual vision and instrumental brilliance, Electric Ladyland remains a prime contender for the status of rock's greatest album." Doggett described the LP as "a display of musical virtuosity never surpassed by any rock musician." ### Break-up of the Experience In January 1969, after an absence of more than six months, Hendrix briefly moved back into his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham's apartment in Brook Street, London, next door to the home of the composer Handel. After a performance of "Voodoo Child", on BBC's Happening for Lulu show in January 1969, the band stopped midway through an attempt at their first hit "Hey Joe" and then launched into an instrumental version of "Sunshine of Your Love", as a tribute to the recently disbanded band Cream, until director and producer Stanley Dorfman was forced to bring the song to a premature end. The Experience bass player Noel Redding describes in his autobiography, "as the minutes ticked by on his live show, short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show...Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us, but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it’s the most relaxed." Dorfman recalls at the BBC club after the show, he found Hendrix to be "a very sweet man, very quiet, he didn’t know he’d done anything wrong at all." However according to rock and roll legend, Hendrix was banned from working at the BBC again. During this time, the Experience toured Scandinavia, West Germany, and gave their final two performances in France. On February 18 and 24, they played sold-out concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, which were the last European appearances of this lineup. By February 1969, Redding had grown weary of Hendrix's unpredictable work ethic and his creative control over the Experience's music. During the previous month's European tour, interpersonal relations within the group had deteriorated, particularly between Hendrix and Redding. In his diary, Redding documented the building frustration during early 1969 recording sessions: "On the first day, as I nearly expected, there was nothing doing ... On the second it was no show at all. I went to the pub for three hours, came back, and it was still ages before Jimi ambled in. Then we argued ... On the last day, I just watched it happen for a while, and then went back to my flat." The last Experience sessions that included Redding—a re-recording of "Stone Free" for use as a possible single release—took place on April 14 at Olmstead and the Record Plant in New York. Hendrix then flew bassist Billy Cox to New York; they started recording and rehearsing together on April 21. The last performance of the original Experience lineup took place on June 29, 1969, at Barry Fey's Denver Pop Festival, a three-day event held at Denver's Mile High Stadium that was marked by police using tear gas to control the audience. The band narrowly escaped from the venue in the back of a rental truck, which was partly crushed by fans who had climbed on top of the vehicle. Before the show, a journalist angered Redding by asking why he was there; the reporter then informed him that two weeks earlier Hendrix announced that he had been replaced with Billy Cox. The next day, Redding quit the Experience and returned to London. He announced that he had left the band and intended to pursue a solo career, blaming Hendrix's plans to expand the group without allowing for his input as a primary reason for leaving. Redding later said: "Mitch and I hung out a lot together, but we're English. If we'd go out, Jimi would stay in his room. But any bad feelings came from us being three guys who were traveling too hard, getting too tired, and taking too many drugs ... I liked Hendrix. I don't like Mitchell." Soon after Redding's departure, Hendrix began lodging at the eight-bedroom Ashokan House, in the hamlet of Boiceville near Woodstock in upstate New York, where he had spent some time vacationing in mid-1969. Manager Michael Jeffery arranged the accommodations in the hope that the respite might encourage Hendrix to write material for a new album. During this time, Mitchell was unavailable for commitments made by Jeffery, which included Hendrix's first appearance on US TV—on The Dick Cavett Show—where he was backed by the studio orchestra, and an appearance on The Tonight Show where he appeared with Cox and session drummer Ed Shaughnessy. ### Woodstock By 1969, Hendrix was the world's highest-paid rock musician. In August, he headlined the Woodstock Music and Art Fair that included many of the most popular bands of the time. For the concert, he added rhythm guitarist Larry Lee and conga players Juma Sultan and Jerry Velez. The band rehearsed for less than two weeks before the performance, and according to Mitchell, they never connected musically. Before arriving at the engagement, Hendrix heard reports that the size of the audience had grown enormously, which concerned him as he did not enjoy performing for large crowds. He was an important draw for the event, and although he accepted substantially less money for the appearance than his usual fee, he was the festival's highest-paid performer. Hendrix decided to move his midnight Sunday slot to Monday morning, closing the show. The band took the stage around 8:00 a.m, by which time Hendrix had been awake for more than three days. The audience, which peaked at an estimated 400,000 people, was reduced to 30,000. The festival MC, Chip Monck, introduced the group as "the Jimi Hendrix Experience", but Hendrix clarified: "We decided to change the whole thing around and call it 'Gypsy Sun and Rainbows'. For short, it's nothin' but a 'Band of Gypsys'." Hendrix's performance included a rendition of the US national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner", with copious feedback, distortion, and sustain to imitate the sounds made by rockets and bombs. Contemporary political pundits described his interpretation as a statement against the Vietnam War. Three weeks later Hendrix said: "We're all Americans ... it was like 'Go America!'... We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see." Immortalized in the 1970 documentary film, Woodstock, Hendrix's version became part of the sixties zeitgeist. Pop critic Al Aronowitz of the New York Post wrote: "It was the most electrifying moment of Woodstock, and it was probably the single greatest moment of the sixties." Images of the performance showing Hendrix wearing a blue-beaded white leather jacket with fringe, a red head-scarf, and blue jeans are regarded as iconic pictures that capture a defining moment of the era. He played "Hey Joe" during the encore, concluding the 31⁄2-day festival. Upon leaving the stage, he collapsed from exhaustion. In 2011, the editors of Guitar World named his performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" the greatest performance of all time. ### Band of Gypsys A legal dispute arose in 1966 regarding a record contract that Hendrix had entered into the previous year with producer Ed Chalpin. After two years of litigation, the parties agreed to a resolution that granted Chalpin the distribution rights to an album of original Hendrix material. Hendrix decided that they would record the LP, Band of Gypsys, during two live appearances. In preparation for the shows he formed an all-black power trio with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles, formerly with Wilson Pickett, the Electric Flag, and the Buddy Miles Express. Critic John Rockwell described Hendrix and Miles as jazz-rock fusionists, and their collaboration as pioneering. Others identified a funk and soul influence in their music. Concert promoter Bill Graham called the shows "the most brilliant, emotional display of virtuoso electric guitar" that he had ever heard. Biographers have speculated that Hendrix formed the band in an effort to appease members of the Black Power movement and others in the black communities who called for him to use his fame to speak up for civil rights. Hendrix had been recording with Cox since April and jamming with Miles since September, and the trio wrote and rehearsed material which they performed at a series of four shows over two nights on December 31 and January 1, at the Fillmore East. They used recordings of these concerts to assemble the LP, which was produced by Hendrix. The album includes the track "Machine Gun", which musicologist Andy Aledort described as the pinnacle of Hendrix's career, and "the premiere example of [his] unparalleled genius as a rock guitarist ... In this performance, Jimi transcended the medium of rock music, and set an entirely new standard for the potential of electric guitar." During the song's extended instrumental breaks, Hendrix created sounds with his guitar that sonically represented warfare, including rockets, bombs, and diving planes. The Band of Gypsys album was the only official live Hendrix LP made commercially available during his lifetime; several tracks from the Woodstock and Monterey shows were released later that year. The album was released in April 1970 by Capitol Records; it reached the top ten in both the US and the UK. That same month a single was issued with "Stepping Stone" as the A-side and "Izabella" as the B-side, but Hendrix was dissatisfied with the quality of the mastering and he demanded that it be withdrawn and re-mixed, preventing the songs from charting and resulting in Hendrix's least successful single; it was also his last. On January 28, 1970, a third and final Band of Gypsys appearance took place; they performed during a music festival at Madison Square Garden benefiting the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium Committee titled the "Winter Festival for Peace". American blues guitarist Johnny Winter was backstage before the concert; he recalled: "[Hendrix] came in with his head down, sat on the couch alone, and put his head in his hands ... He didn't move until it was time for the show." Minutes after taking the stage he snapped a vulgar response at a woman who had shouted a request for "Foxy Lady". He then began playing "Earth Blues" before telling the audience: "That's what happens when earth fucks with space". Moments later, he briefly sat down on the drum riser before leaving the stage. Both Miles and Redding later stated that Jeffery had given Hendrix LSD before the performance. Miles believed that Jeffery gave Hendrix the drugs in an effort to sabotage the current band and bring about the return of the original Experience lineup. Jeffery fired Miles after the show and Cox quit, ending the Band of Gypsys. ### Cry of Love Tour Soon after the abruptly ended Band of Gypsys performance and their subsequent dissolution, Jeffery made arrangements to reunite the original Experience lineup. Although Hendrix, Mitchell, and Redding were interviewed by Rolling Stone in February 1970 as a united group, Hendrix never intended to work with Redding. When Redding returned to New York in anticipation of rehearsals with a re-formed Experience, he was told that he had been replaced with Cox. During an interview with Rolling Stone's Keith Altham, Hendrix defended the decision: "It's nothing personal against Noel, but we finished what we were doing with the Experience and Billy's style of playing suits the new group better." Although an official name was never adopted for the lineup of Hendrix, Mitchell, and Cox, promoters often billed them as the Jimi Hendrix Experience or just Jimi Hendrix. During the first half of 1970, Hendrix sporadically worked on material for what would have been his next LP. Many of the tracks were posthumously released in 1971 as The Cry of Love. He had started writing songs for the album in 1968, but in April 1970 he told Keith Altham that the project had been abandoned. Soon afterward, he and his band took a break from recording and began the Cry of Love tour at the L.A. Forum, performing for 20,000 people. Set-lists during the tour included numerous Experience tracks as well as a selection of newer material. Several shows were recorded, and they produced some of Hendrix's most memorable live performances. At one of them, the second Atlanta International Pop Festival, on July 4, he played to the largest American audience of his career. According to authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz, as many as 500,000 people attended the concert. On July 17, they appeared at the New York Pop Festival; Hendrix had again consumed too many drugs before the show, and the set was considered a disaster. The American leg of the tour, which included 32 performances, ended in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 1, 1970. This would be Hendrix's final concert appearance in the US. ### Electric Lady Studios In 1968, Hendrix and Jeffery jointly invested in the purchase of the Generation Club in Greenwich Village. They had initially planned to reopen the establishment, but when an audit of Hendrix's expenses revealed that he had incurred exorbitant fees by block-booking recording studios for lengthy sessions at peak rates they decided to convert the building into a studio of his own. Hendrix could then work as much as he wanted while also reducing his recording expenditures, which had reached a reported \$300,000 annually. Architect and acoustician John Storyk designed Electric Lady Studios for Hendrix, who requested that they avoid right angles where possible. With round windows, an ambient lighting machine, and a psychedelic mural, Storyk wanted the studio to have a relaxing environment that would encourage Hendrix's creativity. The project took twice as long as planned and cost twice as much as Hendrix and Jeffery had budgeted, with their total investment estimated at \$1 million. Hendrix first used Electric Lady on June 15, 1970, when he jammed with Steve Winwood and Chris Wood of Traffic; the next day, he recorded his first track there, "Night Bird Flying". The studio officially opened for business on August 25, and a grand opening party was held the following day. Immediately afterwards, Hendrix left for England; he never returned to the States. He boarded an Air India flight for London with Cox, joining Mitchell for a performance as the headlining act of the Isle of Wight Festival. ### European tour When the European leg of the Cry of Love tour began, Hendrix was longing for his new studio and creative outlet, and was not eager to fulfill the commitment. On September 2, 1970, he abandoned a performance in Aarhus after three songs, stating: "I've been dead a long time". Four days later, he gave his final concert appearance, at the Isle of Fehmarn Festival in West Germany. He was met with booing and jeering from fans in response to his cancellation of a show slated for the end of the previous night's bill due to torrential rain and risk of electrocution. Immediately following the festival, Hendrix, Mitchell, and Cox traveled to London. Three days after the performance, Cox, who was suffering from severe paranoia after either taking LSD or being given it unknowingly, quit the tour and went to stay with his parents in Pennsylvania. Within days of Hendrix's arrival in England, he had spoken with Chas Chandler, Alan Douglas, and others about leaving his manager, Michael Jeffery. On September 16, Hendrix performed in public for the last time during an informal jam at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho with Eric Burdon and his latest band, War. They began by playing a few of their recent hits, and after a brief intermission Hendrix joined them during "Mother Earth" and "Tobacco Road". He died less than 48 hours later. ## Drugs and alcohol Hendrix entered a small club in Clarksville, Tennessee, in July 1962, drawn in by live music. He stopped for a drink and ended up spending most of the \$400 (\$3,924 in 2022 terms) that he had saved during his time in the Army. "I went in this jazz joint and had a drink," he explained. "I liked it and I stayed. People tell me I get foolish, good-natured sometimes. Anyway, I guess I felt real benevolent that day. I must have been handing out bills to anyone that asked me. I came out of that place with sixteen dollars left." Alcohol eventually became "the scourge of his existence, driving him to fits of pique, even rare bursts of atypical, physical violence". Roby and Schreiber assert that Hendrix first used LSD when he met Linda Keith in late 1966. Shapiro and Glebbeek, however, assert that Hendrix used it in June 1967 at the earliest while attending the Monterey Pop Festival. According to Hendrix biographer Charles Cross, the subject of drugs came up one evening in 1966 at Keith's New York apartment. One of Keith's friends offered Hendrix "acid", a street name for LSD, but Hendrix asked for LSD instead, showing what Cross describes as "his naivete and his complete inexperience with psychedelics". Before that, Hendrix had only sporadically used drugs, including cannabis, hashish, amphetamines, and occasionally cocaine. After 1967, he regularly used cannabis, hashish, LSD, and amphetamines, particularly while touring. According to Cross, "few stars were as closely associated with the drug culture as Jimi". ### Drug abuse and violence When Hendrix drank to excess or mixed drugs with alcohol, often he became angry and violent. His friend Herbie Worthington said Hendrix "simply turned into a bastard" when he drank. According to friend Sharon Lawrence, liquor "set off a bottled-up anger, a destructive fury he almost never displayed otherwise". In January 1968, the Experience travelled to Sweden to start a one-week tour of Europe. During the early morning hours of the first day, Hendrix got into a drunken brawl in the Hotel Opalen in Gothenburg, smashing a plate-glass window and injuring his right hand, for which he received medical treatment. The incident culminated in his arrest and release, pending a court appearance that resulted in a large fine. In 1969, Hendrix rented a house in Benedict Canyon, California, that was burglarized. Later, while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, he accused his friend Paul Caruso of the theft, threw punches and stones at him, and chased him away from his house. A few days later Hendrix hit his girlfriend, Carmen Borrero, above her eye with a vodka bottle during a drunken, jealous rage, and gave her a cut that required stitches. ### Canadian drug charges and trial Hendrix was passing through customs at Toronto International Airport on May 3, 1969, when authorities found a small amount of heroin and hashish in his luggage, and charged him with drug possession. He was released on \$10,000 bail, and was required to return on May 5 for an arraignment hearing. The incident proved stressful for Hendrix, and it weighed heavily on his mind during the seven months leading up to his December 1969 trial. For the Crown to prove possession, they had to show that Hendrix knew that the drugs were there. During the jury trial, he testified that a fan had given him a vial of what he thought was legal medication which he put in his bag. He was acquitted of the charges. Mitchell and Redding later revealed that everyone had been warned about a planned drug bust the day before flying to Toronto; both men also stated that they believed that the drugs had been planted in Hendrix's bag without his knowledge. ## Death, post-mortem, and burial Details concerning Hendrix's last day and death are disputed. He spent much of September 17, 1970, in London with Monika Dannemann, the only witness to his final hours. Dannemann said that she prepared a meal for them at her apartment in the Samarkand Hotel around 11 p.m., when they shared a bottle of wine. She drove him to the residence of an acquaintance at approximately 1:45 a.m., where he remained for about an hour before she picked him up and drove them back to her flat at 3 a.m. She said that they talked until around 7 a.m., when they went to sleep. Dannemann awoke around 11 a.m. and found Hendrix breathing but unconscious and unresponsive. She called for an ambulance at 11:18 a.m., and it arrived nine minutes later. Paramedics transported Hendrix to St Mary Abbots Hospital where Dr. John Bannister pronounced him dead at 12:45 p.m. on September 18. Coroner Gavin Thurston ordered a post-mortem examination which was performed on September 21 by Professor Robert Donald Teare, a forensic pathologist. Thurston completed the inquest on September 28 and concluded that Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates. Citing "insufficient evidence of the circumstances", he declared an open verdict. Dannemann later revealed that Hendrix had taken nine of her prescribed Vesparax sleeping tablets, 18 times the recommended dosage. Desmond Henley embalmed Hendrix's body which was flown to Seattle on September 29. Hendrix's family and friends held a service at Dunlap Baptist Church in Seattle's Rainier Valley on Thursday, October 1; his body was interred at Greenwood Cemetery in nearby Renton, the location of his mother's grave. Family and friends traveled in 24 limousines, and more than 200 people attended the funeral, including Mitch Mitchell, Noel Redding, Miles Davis, John Hammond, and Johnny Winter. Hendrix is often cited as one example of an allegedly disproportionate number of musicians dying at age 27, including Brian Jones, Alan Wilson, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin in the same era, a phenomenon referred to as the 27 Club. ## Unauthorized and posthumous releases By 1967, as Hendrix was gaining in popularity, many of his pre-Experience recordings were marketed to an unsuspecting public as Jimi Hendrix albums, sometimes with misleading later images of Hendrix. The recordings, which came under the control of producer Ed Chalpin of PPX, with whom Hendrix had signed a recording contract in 1965, were often re-mixed between their repeated reissues, and licensed to record companies such as Decca and Capitol. Hendrix publicly denounced the releases, describing them as "malicious" and "greatly inferior", stating: "At PPX, we spent on average about one hour recording a song. Today I spend at least twelve hours on each song." These unauthorized releases have long constituted a substantial part of his recording catalogue, amounting to hundreds of albums. Some of Hendrix's unfinished fourth studio album was released as the 1971 title The Cry of Love. Although the album reached number three in the US and number two in the UK, producers Mitchell and Kramer later complained that they were unable to make use of all the available songs because some tracks were used for 1971's Rainbow Bridge; still others were issued on 1972's War Heroes. Material from The Cry of Love was re-released in 1997 as First Rays of the New Rising Sun, along with the other tracks that Mitchell and Kramer had wanted to include. Four years after Hendrix's death, producer Alan Douglas acquired the rights to produce unreleased music by Hendrix; he attracted criticism for using studio musicians to replace or add tracks. In 1993, MCA Records delayed a multimillion-dollar sale of Hendrix's publishing copyrights because Al Hendrix was unhappy about the arrangement. He acknowledged that he had sold distribution rights to a foreign corporation in 1974, but stated that it did not include copyrights and argued that he had retained veto power of the sale of the catalogue. Under a settlement reached in July 1995, Al Hendrix regained control of his son's song and image rights. He subsequently licensed the recordings to MCA through the family-run company Experience Hendrix LLC, formed in 1995. In August 2009, Experience Hendrix announced that it had entered a new licensing agreement with Sony Music Entertainment's Legacy Recordings division, to take effect in 2010. Legacy and Experience Hendrix launched the 2010 Jimi Hendrix Catalog Project starting with the release of Valleys of Neptune in March of that year. In the months before his death, Hendrix recorded demos for a concept album tentatively titled Black Gold, now in the possession of Experience Hendrix LLC, but it has not been released. ## Equipment ### Guitars Hendrix played a variety of guitars, but was most associated with the Fender Stratocaster. He acquired his first in 1966, when a girlfriend loaned him enough money to purchase a used Stratocaster built around 1964. He used it often during performances and recordings. In 1967, he described the Stratocaster as "the best all-around guitar for the stuff we're doing"; he praised its "bright treble and deep bass". Hendrix mainly played right-handed guitars that were turned upside down and restrung for left-hand playing. Because of the slant of the Stratocaster's bridge pickup, his lowest string had a brighter sound, while his highest string had a darker sound, the opposite of the intended design. Hendrix also used Fender Jazzmasters, Duosonics, two different Gibson Flying Vs, a Gibson Les Paul, three Gibson SGs, a Gretsch Corvette, and a Fender Jaguar. He used a white Gibson SG Custom for his performances on The Dick Cavett Show in September 1969, and a black Gibson Flying V during the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. ### Amplifiers During 1965 and 1966, while Hendrix was playing back-up for soul and R&B acts in the US, he used an 85-watt Fender Twin Reverb amplifier. When Chandler brought Hendrix to England in October 1966, he supplied him with 30-watt Burns amps, which Hendrix thought were too small for his needs. After an early London gig when he was unable to use his Fender Twin, he asked about the Marshall amps he had noticed other groups using. Years earlier, Mitch Mitchell had taken drum lessons from Marshall founder Jim Marshall, and he introduced Hendrix to Marshall. At their initial meeting, Hendrix bought four speaker cabinets and three 100-watt Super Lead amplifiers; he grew accustomed to using all three in unison. The equipment arrived on October 11, 1966, and the Experience used it during their first tour. Marshall amps were important to the development of Hendrix's overdriven sound and his use of feedback, creating what author Paul Trynka described as a "definitive vocabulary for rock guitar". Hendrix usually turned all the control knobs to the maximum level, which became known as the Hendrix setting. During the four years prior to his death, he purchased between 50 and 100 Marshall amplifiers. Jim Marshall said Hendrix was "the greatest ambassador" his company ever had. ### Effects One of Hendrix's signature effects was the wah-wah pedal, which he first heard used with an electric guitar in Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses", released in May 1967. That July, while performing at the Scene club in New York City, Hendrix met Frank Zappa, whose band the Mothers of Invention were performing at the adjacent Garrick Theater. Hendrix was fascinated by Zappa's application of the pedal, and he experimented with one later that evening. He used a wah pedal during the opening to "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)", creating one of the best-known wah-wah riffs of the classic rock era. He also uses the effect on "Up from the Skies", "Little Miss Lover", and "Still Raining, Still Dreaming". Hendrix used a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Vox wah pedal during recording sessions and performances, but also experimented with other guitar effects. He enjoyed a fruitful long-term collaboration with electronics enthusiast Roger Mayer, whom he once called "the secret" of his sound. Mayer introduced him to the Octavia, an octave-doubling effect pedal, in December 1966, and he first recorded with it during the guitar solo to "Purple Haze". Hendrix also used the Uni-Vibe, designed to simulate the modulation effects of a rotating Leslie speaker. He uses the effect during his performance at Woodstock and on the Band of Gypsys track "Machine Gun", which prominently features the Uni-vibe along with an Octavia and a Fuzz Face. For performances, he plugged his guitar into the wah-wah, which was connected to the Fuzz Face, then the Uni-Vibe, and finally a Marshall amplifier. ## Influences As an adolescent in the 1950s, Hendrix became interested in rock and roll artists such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. In 1968, he told Guitar Player magazine that electric blues artists Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and B. B. King inspired him during the beginning of his career; he also cited Eddie Cochran as an early influence. Of Muddy Waters, the first electric guitarist of which Hendrix became aware, he said: "I heard one of his records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death because I heard all of these sounds." In 1970, he told Rolling Stone that he was a fan of western swing artist Bob Wills and while he lived in Nashville, the television show the Grand Ole Opry. Cox stated that during their time serving in the US military, he and Hendrix primarily listened to southern blues artists such as Jimmy Reed and Albert King. According to Cox, "King was a very, very powerful influence". Howlin' Wolf also inspired Hendrix, who performed Wolf's "Killing Floor" as the opening song of his US debut at the Monterey Pop Festival. The influence of soul artist Curtis Mayfield can be heard in Hendrix's guitar playing, and the influence of Bob Dylan can be heard in Hendrix's songwriting; he was known to play Dylan's records repeatedly, particularly Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. ## Legacy The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography for the Experience states: "Jimi Hendrix was arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music. Hendrix expanded the range and vocabulary of the electric guitar into areas no musician had ever ventured before. His boundless drive, technical ability and creative application of such effects as wah-wah and distortion forever transformed the sound of rock and roll." Musicologist Andy Aledort described Hendrix as "one of the most creative" and "influential musicians that has ever lived". Music journalist Chuck Philips wrote: "In a field almost exclusively populated by white musicians, Hendrix has served as a role model for a cadre of young black rockers. His achievement was to reclaim title to a musical form pioneered by black innovators like Little Richard and Chuck Berry in the 1950s." Hendrix favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain. He was instrumental in developing the previously undesirable technique of guitar amplifier feedback, and helped to popularize use of the wah-wah pedal in mainstream rock. He rejected the standard barre chord fretting technique used by most guitarists in favor of fretting the low 6th string root notes with his thumb. He applied this technique during the beginning bars of "Little Wing", which allowed him to sustain the root note of chords while also playing melody. This method has been described as piano style, with the thumb playing what a pianist's left hand would play and the other fingers playing melody as a right hand. Having spent several years fronting a trio, he developed an ability to play rhythm chords and lead lines together, giving the audio impression that more than one guitarist was performing. He was the first artist to incorporate stereophonic phasing effects in rock music recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone wrote: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began." While creating his unique musical voice and guitar style, Hendrix synthesized diverse genres, including blues, R&B, soul, British rock, American folk music, 1950s rock and roll, and jazz. Musicologist David Moskowitz emphasized the importance of blues music in Hendrix's playing style, and according to authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, "[He] explored the outer reaches of psychedelic rock". His influence is evident in a variety of popular music formats, and he has contributed significantly to the development of hard rock, heavy metal, funk, post-punk, grunge, and hip hop music. His lasting influence on modern guitar players is difficult to overstate; his techniques and delivery have been abundantly imitated by others. Despite his hectic touring schedule and notorious perfectionism, he was a prolific recording artist who left behind numerous unreleased recordings. More than 40 years after his death, Hendrix remains as popular as ever, with annual album sales exceeding that of any year during his lifetime. As with his contemporary Sly Stone, Hendrix embraced the experimentalism of white musicians in progressive rock in the late 1960s and inspired a wave of progressive soul musicians that emerged by the next decade. He has directly influenced numerous funk and funk rock artists, including Prince, George Clinton, John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic, and Ernie Isley of the Isley Brothers. Hendrix influenced post-punk guitarists such as John McGeoch of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Robert Smith of The Cure. Grunge guitarists such as Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, and Mike McCready and Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam have cited Hendrix as an influence. Hendrix's influence also extends to many hip hop artists, including De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Digital Underground, Beastie Boys, and Run–D.M.C. Miles Davis was deeply impressed by Hendrix, and he compared Hendrix's improvisational abilities with those of saxophonist John Coltrane. Desert blues artists from the Sahara desert region including Mdou Moctar and Tinariwen have also acknowledged Hendrix's influence. Rock and roll fans still debate whether Hendrix actually said that Chicago co-founder Terry Kath was a better guitar player than him, but Kath named Hendrix as a major influence: "But then there was Hendrix, man. Jimi was really the last cat to freak me. Jimi was playing all the stuff I had in my head. I couldn't believe it, when I first heard him. Man, no one can ever do what he did with a guitar. No one can ever take his place." Hendrix also influenced Black Sabbath, industrial artist Marilyn Manson, blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, Randy Hansen, Uli Jon Roth, pop singer Halsey, Kiss's Ace Frehley, Metallica's Kirk Hammett, Aerosmith's Brad Whitford, Judas Priest's Richie Faulkner, instrumental rock guitarist Joe Satriani, King's X singer/bassist Doug Pinnick, Adrian Belew, and heavy metal virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen, who said: "[Hendrix] created modern electric playing, without question ... He was the first. He started it all. The rest is history." "For many", Hendrix was "the preeminent black rocker", according to Jon Caramanica. Members of the Soulquarians, an experimental black music collective active during the late 1990s and early 2000s, were influenced by the creative freedom in Hendrix's music and extensively used Electric Lady Studios to work on their own music. ### Recognition and awards Hendrix received several prestigious rock music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year. In 1968, Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Also in 1968, the City of Seattle gave him the keys to the city. Disc & Music Echo newspaper honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970 Guitar Player magazine named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. Rolling Stone ranked his three non-posthumous studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968) among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. They ranked Hendrix number one on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, and number six on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Guitar Worlds readers voted six of Hendrix's solos among the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time: "Purple Haze" (70), "The Star-Spangled Banner" (52; from Live at Woodstock), "Machine Gun" (32; from Band of Gypsys), "Little Wing" (18), "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" (11), and "All Along the Watchtower" (5). Rolling Stone placed seven of his recordings in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "All Along the Watchtower" (47) "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" (102), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), "Little Wing" (366), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379). They also included three of Hendrix's songs in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (2), "Voodoo Child" (12), and "Machine Gun" (49). A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated to Hendrix on November 14, 1991, at 6627 Hollywood Boulevard. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In 1998, Hendrix was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame during its first year. In 1999, readers of Rolling Stone and Guitar World ranked Hendrix among the most important musicians of the 20th century. In 2005, his debut album, Are You Experienced, was one of 50 recordings added that year to the US National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress, "[to] be preserved for all time ... [as] part of the nation's audio legacy". In Seattle, November 27, 1992, which would have been Hendrix's 50th birthday, was made Jimi Hendrix Day, largely due to the efforts of his boyhood friend, guitarist Sammy Drain. The blue plaque identifying Hendrix's former residence at 23 Brook Street, London, was the first issued by English Heritage to commemorate a pop star. Next door is the former residence of George Frideric Handel, 25 Brook Street, which opened to the public as the Handel House Museum in 2001. From 2016 the museum made use of the upper floors of 23 for displays about Hendrix and was rebranded as Handel & Hendrix in London. A memorial statue of Hendrix playing a Stratocaster stands near the corner of Broadway and Pine Streets in Seattle. In May 2006, the city renamed a park near its Central District Jimi Hendrix Park, in his honor. In 2012, an official historic marker was erected on the site of the July 1970 Second Atlanta International Pop Festival near Byron, Georgia. The marker text reads, in part: "Over thirty musical acts performed, including rock icon Jimi Hendrix playing to the largest American audience of his career." Hendrix's music has received a number of Hall of Fame Grammy awards, starting with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, followed by two Grammys in 1999 for his albums Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland; Axis: Bold as Love received a Grammy in 2006. In 2000, he received a Hall of Fame Grammy award for his original composition, "Purple Haze", and in 2001, for his recording of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower". Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" was honored with a Grammy in 2009. The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring Hendrix in 2014. On August 21, 2016, Hendrix was inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan. The James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix United States Post Office in Renton Highlands near Seattle, about a mile from Hendrix's grave and memorial, was renamed for Hendrix in 2019. On June 23, 2019, the Band of Gypsys were inducted into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit, Michigan. Billy Cox, the last surviving member of the group, was on hand to accept, along with representatives of the Buddy Miles and Hendrix estates. ## Discography The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced (1967) - Axis: Bold as Love (1967) - Electric Ladyland (1968) Jimi Hendrix/Band of Gypsys''' - Band of Gypsys'' (1970) ## See also - The Electric Lady Studio Guitar, a sculpture made in honour of Hendrix. ## Documentaries

Oberon (moon)

Moon of Uranus

Oberon /ˈoʊbərɒn/, also designated Uranus IV, is the outermost major moon of the planet Uranus. It is the second-largest, with a surface area that is compareable to the area of Australia, and second most massive of the Uranian moons, and the ninth most massive moon in the Solar System. Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, Oberon is named after the mythical king of the fairies who appears as a character in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies partially outside Uranus's magnetosphere. It is likely that Oberon formed from the accretion disk that surrounded Uranus just after the planet's formation. The moon consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is probably differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water may be present at the boundary between the mantle and the core. The surface of Oberon, which is dark and slightly red in color, appears to have been primarily shaped by asteroid and comet impacts. It is covered by numerous impact craters reaching 210 km in diameter. Oberon possesses a system of chasmata (graben or scarps) formed during crustal extension as a result of the expansion of its interior during its early evolution. The Uranian system has been studied up close only once: the spacecraft Voyager 2 took several images of Oberon in January 1986, allowing 40% of the moon's surface to be mapped. ## Discovery and naming Oberon was discovered by William Herschel on January 11, 1787; on the same day he discovered Uranus's largest moon, Titania. He later reported the discoveries of four more satellites, although they were subsequently revealed as spurious. For nearly fifty years following their discovery, Titania and Oberon would not be observed by any instrument other than William Herschel's, although the moon can be seen from Earth with a present-day high-end amateur telescope. All of the moons of Uranus are named after characters created by William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. The name Oberon was derived from Oberon, the King of the Fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The names of all four satellites of Uranus then known were suggested by Herschel's son John in 1852, at the request of William Lassell, who had discovered the other two moons, Ariel and Umbriel, the year before. The adjectival form of the name is Oberonian, /ˌɒbəˈroʊniən/. Oberon was initially referred to as "the second satellite of Uranus", and in 1848 was given the designation Uranus II by William Lassell, although he sometimes used William Herschel's numbering (where Titania and Oberon are II and IV). In 1851 Lassell eventually numbered all four known satellites in order of their distance from the planet by Roman numerals, and since then Oberon has been designated Uranus IV. ## Orbit Oberon orbits Uranus at a distance of about 584,000 km, being the farthest from the planet among its five major moons. Oberon's orbit has a small orbital eccentricity and inclination relative to the equator of Uranus. Its orbital period is around 13.5 days, coincident with its rotational period. In other words, Oberon is tidally locked, with one face always pointing toward the planet. Oberon spends a significant part of its orbit outside the Uranian magnetosphere. As a result, its surface is directly struck by the solar wind. This is important, because the trailing hemispheres of satellites orbiting inside a magnetosphere are struck by the magnetospheric plasma, which co-rotates with the planet. This bombardment may lead to the darkening of the trailing hemispheres, which is actually observed for all Uranian moons except Oberon (see below). Because Uranus orbits the Sun almost on its side, and its moons orbit in the planet's equatorial plane, they (including Oberon) are subject to an extreme seasonal cycle. Both northern and southern poles spend 42 years in a complete darkness, and another 42 years in continuous sunlight, with the sun rising close to the zenith over one of the poles at each solstice. The Voyager 2 flyby coincided with the southern hemisphere's 1986 summer solstice, when nearly the entire northern hemisphere was in darkness. Once every 42 years, when Uranus has an equinox and its equatorial plane intersects the Earth, mutual occultations of Uranus's moons become possible. One such event, which lasted for about six minutes, was observed on May 4, 2007, when Oberon occulted Umbriel. ## Composition and internal structure Oberon is the second-largest and second-most massive of the Uranian moons after Titania, and the ninth-most massive moon in the Solar System. It is the tenth-largest moon by size however, since Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon, is nearly the same size as Oberon although it is about 0.4% larger, despite Oberon having more mass than Rhea. Oberon's density of 1.63 g/cm³, which is higher than the typical density of Saturn's satellites, indicates that it consists of roughly equal proportions of water ice and a dense non-ice component. The latter could be made of rock and carbonaceous material including heavy organic compounds. The presence of water ice is supported by spectroscopic observations, which have revealed crystalline water ice on the surface of the moon. Water ice absorption bands are stronger on Oberon's trailing hemisphere than on the leading hemisphere. This is the opposite of what is observed on other Uranian moons, where the leading hemisphere exhibits stronger water ice signatures. The cause of this asymmetry is not known, but it may be related to impact gardening (the creation of soil via impacts) of the surface, which is stronger on the leading hemisphere. Meteorite impacts tend to sputter (knock out) ice from the surface, leaving dark non-ice material behind. The dark material itself may have formed as a result of radiation processing of methane clathrates or radiation darkening of other organic compounds. Oberon may be differentiated into a rocky core surrounded by an icy mantle. If this is the case, the radius of the core (480 km) is about 63% of the radius of the moon, and its mass is around 54% of the moon's mass—the proportions are dictated by the moon's composition. The pressure in the center of Oberon is about 0.5 GPa (5 kbar). The current state of the icy mantle is unclear. If the ice contains enough ammonia or other antifreeze, Oberon may possess a liquid ocean layer at the core–mantle boundary. The thickness of this ocean, if it exists, is up to 40 km and its temperature is around 180 K (close to the water–ammonia eutectic temperature of 176 K). However, the internal structure of Oberon depends heavily on its thermal history, which is poorly known at present. Albeit more recent publications seem to be in favour of active subterranean oceans throughout the larger moons of Uranus. ## Surface features and geology Oberon is the second-darkest large moon of Uranus after Umbriel. Its surface shows a strong opposition surge: its reflectivity decreases from 31% at a phase angle of 0° (geometrical albedo) to 22% at an angle of about 1°. Oberon has a low Bond albedo of about 14%. Its surface is generally red in color, except for fresh impact deposits, which are neutral or slightly blue. Oberon is, in fact, the reddest among the major Uranian moons. Its trailing and leading hemispheres are asymmetrical: the latter is much redder than the former, because it contains more dark red material. The reddening of the surfaces is often a result of space weathering caused by bombardment of the surface by charged particles and micrometeorites over the age of the Solar System. However, the color asymmetry of Oberon is more likely caused by accretion of a reddish material spiraling in from outer parts of the Uranian system, possibly from irregular satellites, which would occur predominately on the leading hemisphere. Scientists have recognized two classes of geological feature on Oberon: craters and chasmata ('canyons'—deep, elongated, steep-sided depressions which would probably be described as rift valleys or escarpments if on Earth). Oberon's surface is the most heavily cratered of all the Uranian moons, with a crater density approaching saturation—when the formation of new craters is balanced by destruction of old ones. This high number of craters indicates that Oberon has the most ancient surface among Uranus's moons. The crater diameters range up to 206 kilometers for the largest known crater, Hamlet. Many large craters are surrounded by bright impact ejecta (rays) consisting of relatively fresh ice. The largest craters, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, have floors made of a very dark material deposited after their formation. A peak with a height of about 11 km was observed in some Voyager images near the south-eastern limb of Oberon, which may be the central peak of a large impact basin with a diameter of about 375 km. Oberon's surface is intersected by a system of canyons, which, however, are less widespread than those found on Titania. The canyons' sides are probably scarps produced by normal faults which can be either old or fresh: the latter transect the bright deposits of some large craters, indicating that they formed later. The most prominent Oberonian canyon is Mommur Chasma. The geology of Oberon was influenced by two competing forces: impact crater formation and endogenic resurfacing. The former acted over the moon's entire history and is primarily responsible for its present-day appearance. The latter processes were active for a period following the moon's formation. The endogenic processes were mainly tectonic in nature and led to the formation of the canyons, which are actually giant cracks in the ice crust. The canyons obliterated parts of the older surface. The cracking of the crust was caused by the expansion of Oberon by about 0.5%, which occurred in two phases corresponding to the old and young canyons. The nature of the dark patches, which mainly occur on the leading hemisphere and inside craters, is not known. Some scientists hypothesized that they are of cryovolcanic origin (analogs of lunar maria), while others think that the impacts excavated dark material buried beneath the pure ice (crust). In the latter case Oberon should be at least partially differentiated, with the ice crust lying atop the non-differentiated interior. ## Origin and evolution Oberon is thought to have formed from an accretion disc or subnebula: a disc of gas and dust that either existed around Uranus for some time after its formation or was created by the giant impact that most likely gave Uranus its large obliquity. The precise composition of the subnebula is not known; however, the relatively high density of Oberon and other Uranian moons compared to the moons of Saturn indicates that it may have been relatively water-poor. Significant amounts of carbon and nitrogen may have been present in the form of carbon monoxide and N₂ instead of methane and ammonia. The moons that formed in such a subnebula would contain less water ice (with CO and N₂ trapped as clathrate) and more rock, explaining the higher density. Oberon's accretion probably lasted for several thousand years. The impacts that accompanied accretion caused heating of the moon's outer layer. The maximum temperature of around 230 K was reached at the depth of about 60 km. After the end of formation, the subsurface layer cooled, while the interior of Oberon heated due to decay of radioactive elements present in its rocks. The cooling near-surface layer contracted, while the interior expanded. This caused strong extensional stresses in the moon's crust leading to cracking. The present-day system of canyons may be a result of this process, which lasted for about 200 million years, implying that any endogenous activity from this cause ceased billions of years ago. The initial accretional heating together with continued decay of radioactive elements were probably strong enough to melt the ice if some antifreeze like ammonia (in the form of ammonia hydrate) or some salt was present. Further melting may have led to the separation of ice from rocks and formation of a rocky core surrounded by an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water ('ocean') rich in dissolved ammonia may have formed at the core–mantle boundary. The eutectic temperature of this mixture is 176 K. If the temperature dropped below this value the ocean would have frozen by now. Freezing of the water would have led to expansion of the interior, which may have also contributed to the formation of canyon-like graben. Still, present knowledge of the evolution of Oberon is very limited. Although recent analysis concluded that its more likely that the larger moons of Uranus having active subsurface oceans. ## Exploration So far the only close-up images of Oberon have been from the Voyager 2 probe, which photographed the moon during its flyby of Uranus in January 1986. Since the closest approach of Voyager 2 to Oberon was 470,600 km, the best images of this moon have spatial resolution of about 6 km. The images cover about 40% of the surface, but only 25% of the surface was imaged with a resolution that allows geological mapping. At the time of the flyby the southern hemisphere of Oberon was pointed towards the Sun, so the dark northern hemisphere could not be studied. No other spacecraft has ever visited the Uranian system. ## See also - List of natural satellites - Oberon in fiction - List of tallest mountains in the Solar System

U.S. Route 45 in Michigan

US Highway in Michigan

US Highway 45 (US 45) is a part of the United States Numbered Highway System that runs from Mobile, Alabama, to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of the state of Michigan. The highway forms a part of the state trunkline highway system that is maintained by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). It enters the state from Wisconsin south of Watersmeet, ending at an intersection with Ontonagon Street in Ontonagon. In between, the roadway crosses the UP running for approximately 54+3⁄4 miles (88.1 km) through the Ottawa National Forest and parallel to the Ontonagon River. The highway dates back to the 1930s in Michigan. At the time it was extended into the state, it replaced sections of M-26 and M-35. An eight-mile (13 km) segment was significantly reconstructed in the late 1950s, and an alignment change in the 1970s moved the routing of US 45 near Rockland before it was reversed soon afterwards. A segment of roadway that formerly carried US 45 is the site of the Paulding Light, a local phenomenon whose origins were scientifically described in 2010. ## Route description US 45 crosses from Wisconsin to Michigan near Land O' Lakes, Wisconsin, east of the Sylvania Wilderness area of the Ottawa National Forest. The highway angles northeast from the state line before curving around to the north toward Watersmeet, where it intersects US 2. Watersmeet is home to the northern section of the Lac Vieux Desert Indian Reservation. Continuing north across the Gogebic–Ontonagon county line, US 45 crosses the boundary between the Central and Eastern time zones. In southern Ontonagon County, the highway runs west of the Bond Falls Flowage near Paulding. North of here, the trunkline enters Bruce Crossing and intersects M-28. After leaving town, US 45 runs northward parallel to the Middle Branch of the Ontonagon River, and the highway crosses the river near a roadside park south of Rockland. East of Rockland, US 45 meets the southern terminus of M-26; after the intersection, US 45 turns northwesterly and runs parallel to the Ontonagon River and a snowmobile trail (a former branch of the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad). US 45 enters the south side of Ontonagon on Rockland Road near the Holy Family Cemetery. The roadway turns due north, still running parallel to the course of the river. South of downtown, the highway crosses an intersection that serves as the joint termini of M-38 and M-64. M-64 crosses the river from the west on a bridge built in 2006 and ends at the intersection. M-38 comes into town from the east and also ends at the same intersection. US 45 continues north on Rockland Road and turns northwest on River Street along the eastern river bank through downtown. The northern terminus of US 45 is at Ontonagon Street, about 1,000 feet (300 m) from Lake Superior. ## History US 45 debuted in Michigan by 1935 on maps of the time. The highway previously terminated in Des Plaines, Illinois, until it was extended northward to Michigan. US 45 replaced M-26 between the state line north toward Rockland, as well as M-35 between Rockland and Ontonagon. The Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD) rebuilt an eight-mile (13 km) section of the highway in the Military Hills area of eastern Ontonagon County starting in 1957. As part of the project, tons of waste copper rock were hauled into the area to provide a base for the reconstructed roadway, which was previously quite steep through the hills and muddy during rains. The project included a new bridge over the Ontonagon River that opened in late 1959. Along with this bridge, the last eight miles (13 km) of US 45 in the country were paved, connecting the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Superior with a hard-surfaced road. A rerouting in late 1971 moved the US 45 designation along M-26 between Rockland and Greenland. From Greenland, US 45 followed Ontonagon–Greenland Road to Ontonagon. In late 1973, MDOT reversed the rerouting—US 45 was restored to its previous routing on Rockland Road between Rockland and Ontonagon and M-26 was re-extended south from Greenland to Rockland; M-38 was extended west along Ontonagon–Greenland Road. In 2010, students from Michigan Technological University solved the mystery of the Paulding Light, a local phenomenon commonly attributed to paranormal activity. The phenomenon is viewable from a section of Robbins Pond Road, the former routing of US 45 in the Paulding area. According to area folklore, and indicated on signs in the viewing area, the light is from the ghost of a railroad brakeman. Other explanations say the light comes from a ghost train from the 19th century. The students' investigation showed that the light comes from headlights of cars on US 45 in the Paulding area. ## Major intersections ## See also

Battle of Pulo Aura

Minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars

The Battle of Pulo Aura was a minor naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, fought on 14 February 1804, in which a large convoy of Honourable East India Company (HEIC) East Indiamen, well-armed merchant ships, intimidated, drove off and chased away a powerful French naval squadron. Although the French force was much stronger than the British convoy, Commodore Nathaniel Dance's aggressive tactics persuaded Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois to retire after only a brief exchange of shot. Dance then chased the French warships until his convoy was out of danger, whereupon he resumed his passage toward British India. Linois later claimed that the unescorted British merchant fleet was defended by eight ships of the line, a claim criticised by contemporary officers and later historians. The battle occurred during an extended commerce raiding operation by a French squadron led by Linois in the ship of the line Marengo. Linois had sailed to the Indian Ocean in 1803 before the declaration of war, under orders to install garrisons in the French and Dutch colonies in the region and to prey on lightly defended British merchant shipping. One of the richest and most significant targets was the "China Fleet", an annual convoy of East Indiamen from China and other Far Eastern ports that carried millions of pounds' worth of trade goods. Although these large vessels were accompanied by numerous smaller merchant ships, news of the outbreak of war had only just arrived in the Pacific and the only warship available to defend the fleet was the small HEIC armed brig Ganges. Dutch informants notified Linois of the fleet's destination and date of departure from Canton while he was anchored at Batavia on Java, and he sailed in search of the convoy on 28 December 1803, eventually discovering it in early February. Although no warships protected the convoy, Commodore Dance knew that lookouts could, from a distance, mistake a large East Indiaman for a ship of the line. He had his Indiamen formed into a line of battle and raise flags that indicated his fleet included part of the Royal Navy squadron then operating in the Indian Ocean. Although Linois's ships were clearly superior, the British reaction unnerved Linois and he quickly broke off combat. Dance continued his ruse, pursuing Linois for two hours until the body of the convoy was safe. King George III knighted Dance for his courage and various mercantile and patriotic organisations awarded him large sums of money, while both the Emperor Napoleon and Linois's own officers personally castigated the French admiral for his failure to press the attack against a weaker and extremely valuable enemy. Although he remained in command of the squadron for another two years and had some minor success against undefended merchant ships, he suffered a string of defeats and inconclusive engagements against weaker British naval forces. Ironically, Linois was captured at the action of 13 March 1806 by a numerically superior British battle squadron which he had mistaken for a merchant convoy. ## Background During the Napoleonic Wars, the British economy depended on its ability to trade with the British Empire, particularly the valuable colonies in British India. The intercontinental trade was conducted by the governors of India, the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), using their fleet of large, well-armed merchant vessels known as East Indiamen. These ships were of between 500 and 1200 nominal tons burthen (bm) and could carry up to 36 guns for defence against pirates, privateers and small warships. They were not, however, capable under normal circumstances of fighting off an enemy frigate or ship of the line. Their guns were usually of inferior design, and their crew smaller and less well trained than those on a naval ship. The East Indiamen sought to ensure the safety of their cargo and passengers, not defeat enemy warships in battle. Despite these disadvantages, the size of East Indiamen meant that from a distance they appeared quite similar to a small ship of the line, a deception usually augmented by paintwork and dummy cannon. At the Bali Strait Incident of 28 January 1797 an unescorted convoy of East Indiamen had used this similarity to intimidate a powerful French frigate squadron into withdrawing without a fight. In February 1799 an attack by a combined French-Spanish squadron on the assembled convoy at Macau was driven off in the Macau Incident without combat by the small Royal Navy escort squadron. The East Indiamen would gather at ports in India and the Far East and from there set out for Britain in large convoys, often carrying millions of pounds' worth of trade goods. The journey would usually take six months and the ships would subsequently return carrying troops and passengers to augment the British forces stationed in India. "Country ships", smaller merchant vessels chartered for local trade, sometimes independently from the HEIC, would often join the convoys. To protect their ships from the depredations of pirates, the HEIC also operated its own private navy of small armed vessels. In combination, these ships were an effective deterrent against smaller raiders, but were no match for a professional warship. Understanding the importance of the Indian Ocean trade and seeking to threaten it from the start of the inevitable war, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte ordered a squadron to sail for India in March 1803. This force was under the command of Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois and consisted of the ship of the line Marengo and three frigates. Linois operated from the island base of Île de France with orders to attack British shipping once war had begun. Sailing initially to Pondicherry in India, Linois had a close encounter with a British squadron under Rear-Admiral Peter Rainier during July, but was at Île de France in August when news arrived that the Napoleonic Wars had started on 16 May. Determined to fortify the French raiding bases in the region, Linois landed troops and supplies at Réunion and Batavia. During the operation he despatched the frigate Atalante to Muscat, captured numerous individual country ships, and burned the British trading post of Bencoolen. On 10 December he anchored at Batavia for the winter. Shortly thereafter, informants passed to Batavia the composition and date of departure of the British "China Fleet", leading Linois to set out to intercept it. On 28 December, Linois's squadron—consisting of Marengo, frigates Belle Poule and Sémillante, the corvette Berceau and the Dutch brig Aventurier—departed Batavia. The ships carried six months' worth of provisions as Linois had anticipated an extended patrol in the approaches to the Strait of Malacca in the South China Sea. The China Fleet was a large annual British merchant convoy that gathered at Canton in the Pearl River during the winter before sailing for Britain, via India. As the convoy passed through the East Indies, it was joined by vessels sailing from other European ports in the region on the route to India, until it often numbered dozens of ships. The 1804 fleet departed in late January, and by the time it reached the approaches to the Strait of Malacca it had swelled to include 16 East Indiamen, 11 country ships, a Portuguese merchant ship from Macau and a vessel from Botany Bay in New South Wales. Although the HEIC had provided the small, armed brig Ganges as an escort, this vessel could only dissuade pirates; it could not hope to compete with a French warship. There was no military escort: news of the outbreak of war had reached Canton before reinforcements had arrived from the squadron in India. Spies based in Canton had passed the composition and date of departure of the China Fleet to Linois in Batavia, but the Dutch informants at Canton had also passed on false reports that Royal Navy warships were accompanying the convoy, reports that may have been deliberately placed by British authorities. The convoy was an immensely valuable prize, its cargo of tea, silk and porcelain valued at over £8 million in contemporary values (the equivalent of £ as of 2023). Also on board were 80 Chinese plants ordered by Sir Joseph Banks for the royal gardens and carried in a specially designed plant room. The HEIC Select Committee in Canton had been very concerned for the safety of the unescorted convoy, and had debated delaying its departure. The various captains had been consulted, including Henry Meriton, who in his ship Exeter had captured a frigate during the action of 4 August 1800, a disastrous French attack on a convoy of East Indiamen off Brazil. Meriton advised that the convoy was powerful enough in both appearance and reality to dissuade any attack. John Farquharson, captain of Alfred, opposed Meriton, arguing that the crews of East Indiamen were so badly trained they would be unable to mutually defend one another if faced with a determined enemy. Eventually the Committee decided it could delay the convoy no longer and awarded command to the most experienced captain, Commodore Nathaniel Dance—an officer with over 45 years' service at sea—in the East Indiaman Earl Camden. ## Battle At 08:00 on 14 February 1804, with the island of Pulo Aura within sight to the south-west near the eastern entrance to the Straits of Malacca, the Indiaman Royal George raised a signal describing three sail approaching the convoy from the direction of the island. This was Linois's squadron, which had been cruising in the area for the previous month in anticipation of the convoy's arrival. Dance ordered the brig Ganges and the Indiamen Alfred, Royal George, Bombay Castle and Hope to approach the strange vessels and investigate, rapidly discovering they were enemy warships. By 13:00, Dance had readied his guns and reformed his convoy, with the large Indiamen formed up in line of battle to receive the French attack as if they were warships. During the late afternoon, Linois's squadron fell in behind the slow line of merchant ships and Dance expected an immediate attack, but Linois was cautious and merely observed the convoy, preferring to wait until the following morning before engaging the enemy. Dance made use of the delay to gather the smaller country ships on the opposite side of his line from the French, the brig Ganges shepherding them into position and collecting volunteers from their crews to augment the sailors on board the Indiamen. Linois later excused his delay in attacking the merchant convoy by citing the need for caution: > If the bold front put on by the enemy in the daytime had been intended as a ruse to conceal his weakness, he would have profited by the darkness of the night to endeavour to conceal his escape; and in that case should have taken advantage of his manoeuvres. But I soon became convinced that this security was not feigned; three of his ships constantly kept their lights up, and the fleet continued to lie to, in order of battle, throughout the night. This position facilitated my gaining the wind, and enabled me to observe the enemy closely. At dawn on 15 February, both the British and the French raised their colours. Dance hoped to persuade Linois that his ships included some fully armed warships and he therefore ordered the brig Ganges and the four lead ships to hoist blue ensigns, while the rest of the convoy raised red ensigns. By the system of national flags then in use in British ships, this implied that the ships with blue ensigns were warships attached to the squadron of Admiral Rainier, while the others were merchant ships under their protection. Dance was unknowingly assisted by the information that had reached Linois at Batavia, which claimed that there were 23 merchant ships and the brig in the convoy. Dance had collected six additional ships during his journey, and the identity of these were unknown to the French, who assumed that at least some of the unidentified vessels must be warships, particularly as several vessels had been recently painted at Canton to resemble ships of the line. At 09:00 Linois was still only observing the convoy, reluctant to attack until he could be sure of the nature of his opponents. Dance responded to the reprieve by reforming the line of battle into sailing formation to increase his convoy's speed with the intention of reaching the Straits ahead of Linois. With the convoy a less intimidating target, Linois began to slowly approach the British ships. By 13:00 it was clear that Linois's faster ships were in danger of isolating the rear of the convoy, and Dance ordered his lead ships to tack and come about so they would cross in front of the French squadron. The British successfully executed the manoeuvre, and at 13:15 Linois opened fire on the lead ship—Royal George—under the command of John Fam Timmins. The Royal George and the next four ships in line, the Indiaman Ganges, Dance's Earl Camden, the Warley and the Alfred, all returned fire, Ganges initially attacking Royal George in error. Captain James Prendergrass in Hope, the next in line, was so eager to join the battle that he misjudged his speed and collided with Warley, the ships falling back as their crews worked to separate their rigging. Shots were then exchanged at long range for 43 minutes, neither side inflicting severe damage. Royal George had a sailor named Hugh Watt killed, another man wounded, and suffered some damage to her hull. None of the other British ships or any of the French reported anything worse than superficial damage in the engagement. At 14:00, Linois abandoned the action and ordered his squadron to haul away with the wind and sail eastwards, away from the convoy, under all sail. Determined to maintain the pretence of the presence of warships, Dance ordered the ships flying naval ensigns, including his flagship Earl Camden, to chase the French. None of the merchant ships could match the French speed, but an attempt at a chase would hopefully dissuade the French from returning. For two hours, Dance's squadron followed Linois, Hope coming close to catching Aventurier but ultimately unable to overtake the brig. At 16:00, Dance decided to gather his scattered ships and return to his former heading rather than risk attack from other raiders or lose sight of his convoy in the darkness. By 20:00, the entire British convoy had anchored at the entrance to the Straits of Malacca. On 28 February, the British ships of the line HMS Sceptre and Albion joined them in the Strait and conducted them safely to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic. There HMS Plantagenet escorted the convoy to England. Five whalers and Carmarthen, Captain Doree, also joined the convoy, with the Blackhouse, from coast of Guinea, joining at sea. The convoy returned to England without further incident. Linois's squadron reached Batavia several days after the action without encountering any British ships. He was there joined by Atalante and, after taking on supplies, made sail for Île de France, arriving on 2 April. The Dutch brig Aventurier was left at Batavia and remained there until a raid on the port by a British force in November 1806, when it was destroyed. The French admiral later attempted to explain his conduct during the engagement: > The ships which had tacked rejoined those which were engaging us, and three of the engaging ships manoeuvred to double our rear, while the remainder of the fleet, crowding sail and bearing up, evinced an intention to surround us. By this manoeuvre the enemy would have rendered my situation very dangerous. The superiority of his force was ascertained, and I had no longer to deliberate on the part I should take to avoid the consequence of an unequal engagement: profiting by the smoke, I hauled up to port, and steering east-north-east, I increased by distance from the enemy, who continued the pursuit of the squadron for three hours, discharging at it several broadsides. ### Orders of battle ## Aftermath Nathaniel Dance and his fellow captains were highly praised in the aftermath of the battle: in saving the convoy they had prevented both the HEIC and Lloyd's of London from likely financial ruin, the repercussions of which would have had profound effects across the British Empire. The various commanders and their crews were presented with a £50,000 prize fund to be divided among them, and the Lloyd's Patriotic Fund and other national and mercantile institutions made a series of awards of ceremonial swords, silver plate and monetary gifts to individual officers. Lloyd's Patriotic Fund gave each captain a sword worth £50, and one to Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Merrick Fowler, travelling as a passenger on Earl Camden, and one worth £100 to Nathaniel Dance. Dance was specifically rewarded, receiving royal recognition when he was made a Knight Bachelor by King George III. He was also personally presented with the sum of £5,000 by the Bombay Insurance Company and an additional £500 a year for life by the HEIC. Dance immediately retired from the sea to Enfield Town, where he died in 1827. He refused to take full credit for the survival of the convoy, writing in reply to the award from the Bombay Insurance Company: > Placed, by the adventitious circumstances of seniority of service and absence of convoy, in the chief command of the fleet intrusted to my care, it has been my good fortune to have been enabled, by the firmness of those by whom I was supported, to perform my trust not only with fidelity, but without loss to my employers. Public opinion and public rewards have already far outrun my deserts; and I cannot but be sensible that the liberal spirit of my generous countrymen has measured what they are pleased to term their grateful sense of my conduct, rather by the particular utility of the exploit, than by any individual merit I can claim. Among the passengers on the Indiamen were a number of Royal Navy personnel, survivors of the shipwreck of the exploratory vessel HMS Porpoise off the coast of New South Wales the previous year. This party—carried aboard Ganges, Royal George and Earl Camden—volunteered to assist the gun teams aboard their ships and Dance specifically thanked them in his account of the action. One was Lieutenant Robert Merrick Fowler, the former commander of Porpoise, who distinguished himself in a variety of capacities during the engagement. Some of the party had influential careers in the Navy, including the naval architect James Inman, who sailed on Warley, and John Franklin, who later became a polar explorer. Also aboard was Indian businessman Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy returning from the second of his five voyages to China. Linois continued his raiding, achieving some success against individual sailing ships, but failing to press successfully his numerical superiority against British naval forces; most notably at the Battle of Vizagapatam on 15 September 1804 and the action of 6 August 1805. Ironically, Linois was eventually captured at the action of 13 March 1806 after mistaking a squadron of British ships of the line for a merchant convoy in the mid-Atlantic. Linois was concerned throughout the engagement for the safety of his ships: with the nearest dockyard over 3,000 nmi (3,500 mi; 5,600 km) away at Île de France, he could not afford to suffer severe damage to his rigging or masts that would leave his squadron crippled. He also sought to defend his behaviour off Pulo Aura with the claim that the British convoy was protected by as many as eight ships of the line, and that he had performed heroically in saving his squadron from this overwhelming force. Subsequent historians have ridiculed this latter statement: William James wryly commented in his account of the action, written in 1827, that "it would be uncharitable to call into question the courage of Rear-admiral Linois" and William Laird Clowes said in 1900 that "his timidity and want of enterprise threw away a great opportunity". Nicholas Rodger, writing in 2004, was even more critical, insisting that "his [Linois's] officers do not seem to have been fooled, and it is extremely difficult to believe that he was." He goes on to suggest that no experienced seaman could possibly have mistaken a poorly manned and poorly trained merchant crew for the crew of a real Royal Navy ship of the line, concluding that "Linois had thrown away a prize worth at least £8 million through mere timidity". The most scathing criticism of Linois's conduct came from Napoleon himself, who wrote to Minister of Marine Denis Decrès on the subject, stating: > All the enterprises at sea which have been undertaken since I became the head of the Government have missed fire because my admirals see double and have discovered, I know not how or where, that war can be made without running risks ... Tell Linois that he has shown want of courage of mind, that kind of courage which I consider the highest quality in a leader. ## See also - Frederick Marryat's 1832 novel Newton Forster - Patrick O'Brian's 1973 novel HMS Surprise

Cliff Thorburn

Canadian snooker player (born 1948)

Clifford Charles Devlin Thorburn CM (born 16 January 1948) is a Canadian retired professional snooker player. Nicknamed "The Grinder" because of his slow, determined style of play, he won the World Snooker Championship in 1980, defeating Alex Higgins 18–16 in the final. He is generally recognised as the sport's first world champion from outside the United Kingdom—since Australian Horace Lindrum's 1952 title is usually disregarded—and he remains the only world champion from the Americas. He was runner-up in two other world championships, losing 21–25 to John Spencer in the 1977 final and 6–18 to Steve Davis in the 1983 final. At the 1983 tournament, Thorburn became the first player to make a maximum break in a World Championship match, achieving the feat in his second-round encounter with Terry Griffiths. Ranked world number one during the 1981–82 season, Thorburn was the first non-British player to top the snooker world rankings. He won the invitational Masters in 1983, 1985, and 1986, making him the first player to win the tournament three times and the first to retain the title. He retired from the main professional tour in 1996. Inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Snooker Hall of Fame in 2014, he competed later in his career in Snooker Legends events and on the World Seniors Tour, winning the 2018 Seniors Masters at the Crucible Theatre at age 70. He retired from competitive snooker after the 2022 UK Seniors Championship. ## Early life Thorburn was born on 16 January 1948 in Victoria, British Columbia. His parents separated when he was eighteen months old. He was abandoned by his mother, and after spending about two years in an orphanage during a custody dispute, was raised by his father and his paternal grandmother. He was told that his mother had died, but, aged twenty, learnt that she was still alive. He played pool and lacrosse in his youth, and set a one-game scoring record of ten goals in the Greater Victoria Minor Lacrosse Association "midget division" in 1958. He left school at the age of 16, and travelled across Canada playing pool and snooker money matches, taking jobs as a dishwasher and working on a garbage truck to help earn money for his stakes. In 1968 he entered his first tournaments, and won the Toronto City Championship. He spent time with Fred Davis and Rex Williams when they toured Canada in 1970, and afterwards became a resident professional at the House of Champions club in Toronto. In July 1970, he reportedly made a maximum break of 147 in a non-competitive game against Fred Hardwick. He made six century breaks in winning the North American Amateur Championship in 1971, equalling the record, jointly held by Joe Davis and George Chenier, for most century breaks in a single tournament. ## Early professional career Thorburn played John Spencer in a series of three exhibition matches in 1971; although he lost all three, he was recommended by Spencer to the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, and he was accepted as a professional in 1972. Thorburn travelled to England in 1973, and on the day of his arrival, the reigning world snooker champion Alex Higgins offered to play him for £5 a frame. Thorburn, receiving 28 points start in each frame, claims to have beaten Higgins in every frame they played, and that Higgins refused to pay up. At the 1973 World Snooker Championship, his first major tournament on the professional snooker circuit, Thorburn defeated Dennis Taylor 9–8 in the first round then lost 15–16 to Williams in the second round. Later that year, he had a 4–0 win over Pat Houlihan at the 1973 Norwich Union Open before losing 2–4 to Higgins in the quarter-final. In the 1974 World Snooker Championship he defeated Alex McDonald 8–3 in qualifying then lost 4–8 to Paddy Morgan in the first round. He started the 1974–75 snooker season with a victory in the 1974 Canadian Open, knocking out Willie Thorne and Graham Miles to reach the final, where he won 8–6 against Taylor. He reached the quarter-finals of the 1975 World Snooker Championship with wins over Morgan and Miles, losing the quarter-final 12–19 to Eddie Charlton, and, the following year, was eliminated 14–15 by Higgins in the first round of the 1976 World Snooker Championship. The 1977 World Snooker Championship was the first to be held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. Thorburn became the first Canadian world snooker championship finalist. He whitewashed Chris Ross 11–0 in qualifying, then recorded a 13–6 win over Williams. In the quarter-final, he won in the deciding frame, 13–12, against Charlton. He overcame Taylor 18–16 in the semi-final, and twelve hours later was facing Spencer in the final. Spencer built a 4–2 lead at the end of the first , but Thorburn won four of the next six frames and they finished the second session level at 6–6. Thorburn took the first two frames of the third session, and it finished with them level again, at 9–9. Thorburn built a 13–11 lead during the fourth session, and extended it to 15–11 before Spencer won four consecutive frames to make it 15–15; the next session again saw them share the frames, finishing at 18–18. Spencer won three frames in a row to lead 21–18, and Thorburn took the next two to trail by a single frame. Spencer took the last frame of the session, leading 22–20. In the last session, Thorburn again narrowed the gap to one frame, but then Spencer won three in a row to achieve victory at 25–21. Thorburn reached the final of the 1978 Masters with wins over Doug Mountjoy and Spencer, losing 5–7 to Higgins in the final. He was knocked out of the 1978 World Snooker Championship by Charlton, 12–13 in the quarter-finals. In the 1978–79 snooker season he defeated Tony Meo 17–15 in the final to win the 1978 Canadian Open after having trailed 6–10 at the end of the first day of the final, but lost his opening matches in both the Masters (4–5 to Perrie Mans) and the World Championship (10–13 to John Virgo). He retained his Canadian Open title in 1979, taking a 10–3 lead over Terry Griffiths before winning the match in the deciding frame, at 17–16. ## 1980s ### 1980 world snooker champion Thorburn had defeated Virgo 6–1 in the round robin phase of the 1980 Bombay International, but lost 7–13 to him in the final. He won 5–3 against Virgo in the first round of the 1980 Masters, then lost 3–5 to Griffiths in the quarter-final. In advance of the 1980 World Championship, he practiced at a club near the Crucible that was owned by a friend, and gave up smoking and drinking alcohol for a week before the tournament. His first match was against Mountjoy, Thorburn finishing their first session behind 3–5. In the evening, he played cards and drank alcohol with friends until 5:00am, resuming the match the next day by winning the first five frames in succession. Thorburn won the match 13–10. In the quarter-final, he beat Jim Wych 13–6, having led 5–3, and 10–6. He led David Taylor 5–3 after their first semi-final session, and 11–4 at the end of the second. In the last session of the match, Thorburn extended his lead to 15–7 by the mid-session interval, then won 16–7 with a break of 114 in the 23rd frame, becoming the first player to reach a second final at the Crucible. His opponent in the final was Higgins, the 1972 champion. Thorburn won the first frame, and Higgins won the next five. Thorburn won the seventh to make it 5–2, Higgins complaining after the frame that Thorburn had been standing in his line of sight, a claim that author and sports statistician Ian Morrison called "unfounded". Higgins led 6–3 at the end of the first session, extending this to 9–5 before Thorburn levelled the match at 9–9. Writing in The Times, Sydney Friskin described the match to this point as a contrast of styles: "the shrewd cumulative processes of Thorburn against the explosive break-building of Higgins". He also noted that each player had accused the other of distracting them during the match. Thorburn won the 19th and 20th frames, Higgins taking the following two to level at 11–11. Thorburn went ahead at 12–11 and 13–12, Higgins levelling the match both times, and the third session ending 13–13. In the final session, Higgins won the first frame then Thorburn won the next two, before Higgins equalized at 15–15. Thorburn led 16–15, and missed an easy that let Higgins in to make it 16–16. With a break of 119, Thorburn moved within a frame of victory at 17–16. In the 34th frame, leading 45–9 in points, he laid a for Higgins, and made a 51 break after that to win the title. The BBC's television coverage of the final had been interrupted by the broadcast of live footage of the Iranian Embassy Siege. The conclusion of the final was watched by 14.5million television viewers. Thorburn is generally regarded as the first player from outside the United Kingdom to win the world championship, Horace Lindrum's victory in the 1952 World Snooker Championship usually being disregarded. After the match, Higgins said of Thorburn "he's a grinder", and the nickname "The Grinder" was subsequently associated with Thorburn, seen as apt for his slow, determined style of play. Thorburn has aspired to be known by the nickname "Champagne Cliff", but admitted later that it never caught on. He won the Canadian Open for a third successive year in 1980, defeating Griffiths 17–10 in the final, and was part of the Canada Team that reached the final of the 1980 World Challenge Cup, where they lost 5–8 to Wales. He led Higgins 5–1 in the semi-final of the 1981 Masters, but lost the match 5–6. At the 1981 World Championship, as defending champion, he reached the semi-final where he lost 10–16 to Steve Davis. Following a 4–10 loss to Jimmy White in the first round of the 1982 World Snooker Championship, Thorburn decided to return to Canada. Thorburn had been number two in the 1980/1981 world rankings, and reached number one in the 1981/1982 rankings. He won the 1983 Masters, recovering from 2–5 against Charlton to win 6–5 in the semi-final, and defeating Ray Reardon 9–7 in the final. ### 1983 world championship maximum break In 1983, Thorburn became the first player to make a maximum break at the World Championship, during the fourth frame of his second-round match against Griffiths, and only the second player to make an official maximum in professional competition (after Davis at the 1982 Classic). Thorburn started the break by a . While he was completing the break, play stopped on the tournament's second table because his friend and fellow Canadian Bill Werbeniuk wanted to watch. The match against Griffiths ended at 3:51am, Thorburn emerging as the winner, 13–12. He then defeated Kirk Stevens 13–12 (from 10–12) in the quarter-final, and Tony Knowles 16–15 (from 13–15) in the semi-final. During the semi-final, which finished at 12:45am, Thorburn learnt that his wife Barbara had suffered a miscarriage on the day of his maximum break. He played Steve Davis in the final. From 2–2 after the first four frames, Davis won four in a row to leave Thorburn behind 2–6, extending this to 2–9 at the start of the second session, and 5–12 at the end of the first day. Davis wrapped up victory on the second day, at 18–6, this being the first final at the Crucible to be completed in only three sessions. Commenting on Thorburn's performance in the final, snooker historian Clive Everton observed that the long matches he had played in reaching the final had "left him so drained... that he was able to offer only token resistance." ### 1984 to 1989 Thorburn enjoyed a resurgence in form during the 1984–85 season. He reached the final of the Grand Prix, where he lost to Dennis Taylor 2–10. In the semi-final, Thorburn had defeated the reigning world champion Steve Davis 9–7. He also reached the final of the Classic in January 1985, where he met Thorne, the latter winning five frames in a row to win 13–8 after the pair had been tied at 8–8. Thorburn was again runner-up in the 1986 Classic, this time losing to Jimmy White in the final 12–13. Thorburn fluked a pot on the in the deciding frame, to leave White requiring snookers to win. White potted the brown and , then laid a snooker on the . Thorburn failed to hit the pink, which gave White the points he needed, and White then potted the pink and black to win the title. He won further Masters titles by defeating Mountjoy 9–6 in 1985, and White 9–5 in 1986. He became the first player ever to retain the Masters title, and the first to win it three times. Thorburn experienced success in the Scottish Masters, an invitational event which opened the snooker season, in 1985 and 1986. He defeated Thorne 9–7 in the 1985 final, and Alex Higgins 9–8 the following year. He won the opening ranking event in the 1985–86 snooker calendar, the Matchroom Trophy, where he beat Jimmy White in the final 12–10, having trailed 0–7. He was then runner-up in the corresponding event the following two seasons, 9–12 to Neal Foulds in 1986, and 5–12 to Davis in 1987. In 1988 Thorburn was fined £10,000, had two ranking points deducted, and was banned for two ranking tournaments, by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association. The Association's disciplinary committee had decided that Thorburn had brought the sport into disrepute, as a drug test that he took at the 1988 British Open showed that he had "minute traces of cocaine in his urine sample". He compiled another maximum break in the 1989 Matchroom League, during a match against White. ## Later years Thorburn last qualified for the World Championship in 1994, where he faced Nigel Bond in the first round. Thorburn led by 9–2 but eventually lost 9–10. At the 1995 Thailand Open, ranked 54th, he defeated three players from the top 16, including second-ranked Steve Davis, to reach the semi-finals. It was the first time he had reached this stage of a major event since the 1991 European Open. He lost the semi-final 0–5 to Ronnie O'Sullivan. Thorburn effectively retired from the professional tournament circuit after the 1995–96 season. Ranked 91st, and having not entered for any ranking tournaments in the 1996–97 season, he was quoted as saying that when he realized he would have to take part in tournament qualifying rounds for several weeks, "I just couldn't accept that... When you've played at all of the major venues in front of capacity crowds, it's hard to focus and get motivated playing with just one man and a dog watching." He played for Canada in the 1996 World Cup, where his team reached the quarter-finals. Thorburn won over one million pounds in prize money during the course of his professional career. Playing as an amateur again, he won the Canadian Amateur Championship in 2001; he had previously won the tournament in 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977. During the 2006 World Championship, he flew to Sheffield to unveil a life-size painting of the maximum break that he made at the tournament in 1983. Painted by the artist Michael Myers, the work is on display at the Macdonald St. Paul's Hotel in Sheffield. Thorburn competed on the inaugural Snooker Legends Tour in 2010. At the age of 70, Thorburn won the 2018 Seniors Masters at the Crucible Theatre, defeating Jonathan Bagley 2–0 in the final. Shortly before turning 74, he announced that the 2022 UK Seniors Championship would be his last competitive event. Thorburn played his last competitive match on 5 January 2022 against Kuldesh Johal, losing 0–3. ## Personal life Thorburn is the father of one son and one daughter, the latter of whom is transgender. Following his World Championship victory, he bought a house in England with the intention of spending more time in Britain. His manager Darryl McKerrow was killed in a hunting accident during the 1984–85 season, and Thorburn was subsequently managed by Robert Windsor, until joining Barry Hearn's Matchroom Sport in January 1988. Thorburn was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1984. He was added to the BC Sports Hall of Fame in 1995, and inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. His instruction book, Cliff Thorburn's Snooker Skills, was published in 1987 by Hamlyn, and his autobiography, Playing for Keeps, co-written with Everton, was published by Partridge Press in the same year. Thorburn is the head coach for cue sports at the Canadian Billiards and Snooker Association, director of coaching and an ambassador for the Pan American Billiards & Snooker Association, and a member of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association International Expert Coaching Advisory Panel. ## Performance and rankings timeline ## Career finals ### Ranking finals: 10 (2 titles) Thorburn's record in ranking tournament finals is shown below. ### Non-ranking finals: 25 (18 titles) World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, the governing body for professional snooker, first published official world rankings for players on the main tour for the 1976–77 season. Thorburn's record in non-ranking tournament finals is shown below. ### Team finals: 9 (4 titles) ### Amateur finals: 12 (7 titles)

Holy Thorn Reliquary

14th-century reliquary made for John, Duke of Berry

The Holy Thorn Reliquary was probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry, to house a relic of the Crown of Thorns. The reliquary was bequeathed to the British Museum in 1898 by Ferdinand de Rothschild as part of the Waddesdon Bequest. It is one of a small number of major goldsmiths' works or joyaux that survive from the extravagant world of the courts of the Valois royal family around 1400. It is made of gold, lavishly decorated with jewels and pearls, and uses the technique of enamelling en ronde bosse, or "in the round", which had been recently developed when the reliquary was made, to create a total of 28 three-dimensional figures, mostly in white enamel. Except at its base the reliquary is slim, with two faces; the front view shows the end of the world and the Last Judgement, with the Trinity and saints above and the resurrection of the dead below, and the relic of a single long thorn believed to come from the crown of thorns worn by Jesus when he was crucified. The rear view has less extravagant decoration, mostly in plain gold in low relief, and has doors that opened to display a flat object, now missing, which was presumably another relic. The reliquary was in the Habsburg collections from at least the 16th century until the 1860s, when it was replaced by a forgery during a restoration by an art dealer, Salomon Weininger. The fraud remained undetected until well after the original reliquary came to the British Museum. The reliquary was featured in the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects, in which Neil MacGregor described it as "without question one of the supreme achievements of medieval European metalwork", and was a highlight of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe at the British Museum from June 23 to October 2011. ## History King Louis IX of France bought what he believed to be the authentic Crown of Thorns in Constantinople in 1239, and individual thorns were distributed as gifts by subsequent French kings. John, Duke of Berry (1340–1416), brother of King Charles V of France, had this reliquary made to house a single thorn; it was probably made a few years before he commissioned his famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, and some years after he commissioned the Royal Gold Cup, also in the British Museum. Previously dated between 1401 and 1410, from evidence in John Cherry's book of 2010 the reliquary is now thought to have been made before 1397; based on the heraldic forms used, the museum now dates it to 1390–97. The Holy Thorn Reliquary was later thought to have been in the possession of Louis I, Duke of Orléans, but all recent writers prefer his uncle, the Duke of Berry. Its location is unknown until an inventory of 1544, when it belonged to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, perhaps as an inheritance from his ancestors the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. It presumably passed to the Austrian branch of the Habsburgs on Charles V's death, as it is listed in several inventories of the Imperial Schatzkammer ("treasure chamber") in Vienna from 1677 onwards. It remained in Vienna until after 1860, when it appeared in an exhibition. Some time after this it was sent to be restored by Salomon Weininger, an art dealer with access to skilled craftsmen, who secretly made a number of copies. He was later convicted of other forgeries, and died in prison in 1879, but it was still not realised that he had returned one of his copies of the reliquary to the Imperial collections instead of the original. The Viennese Rothschild family bought the original reliquary by 1872, in ignorance of its provenance; it was inherited by Ferdinand de Rothschild, who moved to England, and built Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. One of the copies remained in the Ecclesiastical Treasury of the Imperial Habsburg Court in Vienna, where the deception remained undetected for several decades. The original reliquary reached the British Museum as part of the Waddesdon Bequest in 1899, by which time its origins had been "completely lost" and it was described as "Spanish, 16th Century". Thus its history had to be reconstructed through scholarship; the meaning of the heraldic plaques on the castle base had by now been lost in both London and Vienna. The first publication to assert that the London reliquary was the one recorded in earlier Viennese inventories was an article by Joseph Destrée in 1927; the matter was not finally settled until 1959 when the Viennese version was brought to London to enable close comparison. The assembled experts from the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna agreed that the London reliquary was the original. Under the terms of the Waddesdon Bequest the reliquary cannot leave the museum; in 2011 it was omitted from the Cleveland and Baltimore legs of the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe. Normally it is on display in Room 45, the dedicated Waddesdon Bequest Room, as specified in the terms of the bequest. ## Description The Holy Thorn Reliquary is made of gold, enamel, rock crystal, pearls, rubies and sapphires. It is just over 30 centimetres (12 in) high and weighs 1.4 kilograms (3.1 lb). There are some areas of damage (including what appears to be deliberate removal of enamel in the 19th century), and small losses and repairs; but generally the reliquary is in good condition. The central front compartment holding the relic is protected by a thin pane of rock crystal, which has kept it in perfect condition. The enamel is mostly in ronde bosse technique, applied to three-dimensional figures, with white as the dominant colour. At the time, white enamel using lead had been only recently developed and was very fashionable, dominating many contemporary ronde bosse works. There is also red, green, blue, pink, and black enamel. Pure gold is used throughout, which is rare even in royal commissions of such pieces at this period; most use cheaper silver-gilt for the structural framework. The jewels, which would have been keenly appreciated by contemporary viewers, include two large sapphires, one above God the Father at the very top of the reliquary, where it may have represented heaven, and the other below Christ, on which the thorn is mounted. The gold elements framing God the Father and the central compartment with Christ and the thorn are decorated with alternating rubies and pearls, totalling fourteen of each. All the gemstones have the smooth and polished cabochon cut normal in medieval jewellery, and though they are set in the reliquary with gold "claws", all are drilled through as though for threading on a necklace, suggesting that they are re-used from another piece. There may have been other jewels now lost, for example mounted in two holes on either side of the door of the castle-like base. ### Front face The design of the front face is based on the general resurrection of the dead following the Last Judgment. At the top sits God the Father, above two angels. A small hole at the level of their knees shows where a dove representing the Holy Spirit was originally attached; with Christ below, all three persons of the Trinity were therefore represented. A round-topped compartment protected by a rock-crystal "window" holds the relic itself and the group around Christ. Christ in Judgment is shown seated displaying the wounds of his crucifixion, with his feet resting on the globe of the world, and making a blessing gesture. As with all the enamelled figures that are still extant, the hair is in gold, the main robe is in white, and the flesh is in white with coloured eyes and lips, a touch of pink on the cheeks. Behind Christ the celestial spheres are represented like a rainbow, and above him fly two angels holding Instruments of the Passion, including the crown of thorns over his head; behind him a cross in shallow relief emerges from the curved gold background. The thorn relic rises below and in front of him, mounted on a "monstrously large sapphire". To the left and right of Christ are shown John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary in supplicant poses, a traditional grouping; John was also one of the Duke's patron saints. Around the central scene small figures of the twelve Apostles carrying their identifying attributes emerge from the foliage border of oak leaves and tendrils; the uppermost heads on each side are replacements, probably by Weininger in the 1860s. Below this upper section there is a gold scroll label with the Latin inscription Ista est una spinea corone / Domini nostri ihesu xpisti ("This is a thorn from the crown / Of Our Lord Jesus Christ") in black enamel filling the engraved letters. Below the inscription is a scene showing the mass resurrection of naked people rising from their graves on the Day of Judgement. On a green enamel mound like a hillside are four naked figures, two men and two women, emerging from tiny gold coffins whose lids have been upturned on the ground; the women wear white caps. Four angels blowing horns sound the "Last Trump" of the Book of Revelation, standing on the turrets of a tiny castle which serves as the base of the reliquary. The Last Judgement was an especially appropriate subject for setting a relic from the Crown of Thorns. Some thought that the crown was held by the French kings on loan, and would be reclaimed by Christ on the Day of Judgement—a belief expressed in the antiphon sung at Sens Cathedral in 1239 to celebrate the arrival of the main relic. Two panels on the walls of the castle are patterned with the coat of arms of the Duke of Berry, and their form has been crucial for establishing the provenance and date of the work. Two of the angels with horns have blue fleurs-de-lis on their robes; the other two, patterns of dots in blue. All the arches of the castle are semicircular, and in fact the whole reliquary lacks any Gothic pointed arches, even among the tracery—a sign of advanced artistic taste at the time. In this respect the Holy Thorn Reliquary contrasts strongly with the Tableau of the Trinity in the Louvre (possibly made in London), whose framework is a forest of crocketed Gothic pinnacles, although estimates of its date cover the same period as the reliquary. ### Rear face The rear face is plainer, with no jewels, but still highly decorated; Cherry speculates that it may originally have been much more simple and not designed for viewing, with most of the other elements added after it was originally made. At the top is a medallion with the face of Christ set in a sunburst. The central round-topped area contains two doors, secured with a small gold pin, containing full-length gold figures in relief, chased in gold, a feature unique to this reliquary. On the left door is the archangel Saint Michael, spearing a dragon representing the devil. He was both the patron saint of the French monarchy, and also traditionally the person responsible for supervising the chaotic crowds at the Last Judgement, when he is often shown in art weighing souls in a pair of scales. On the right is Saint Christopher, carrying the Christ child on his shoulders, who raises his hand in blessing. There was a popular belief that sight of an image of Saint Christopher meant that a person would not die on that day without receiving the Last Rites, which may well explain his presence here. In the fake in Vienna, the figures of both saints are enamelled; flesh is white, Michael and the Christ child have red robes, and Christopher blue, and the saints stand on a brownish dragon and blue water respectively, with green grass below both of these. Some scholars have thought it unlikely that the forger invented this scheme, and therefore presumed that he copied enamel on the original that has been removed in the 19th century, probably because it was damaged—sections of enamel cannot be patched up, but must be removed completely and redone. However John Cherry believes this and other changes in the enamel of the Vienna version are elaborations by Weininger and his craftsmen; for example in Vienna the wings of the trumpeting angels are coloured. The two figures are in a sophisticated "soft and flowing" International Gothic style executed with great virtuosity; Michael's staff is detached from the background over most of its length and is one of a number of elements that extend outside the frame of the door. If there was once enamel on the two figures it would have been at least mainly in more fragile translucent enamels, as the very fine working of many details of them was clearly intended to be seen. The rougher working of the surfaces at the bottom of the doors: the dragon below St Michael, the water below St Christopher, and the ground below both of these, suggests that the missing original enamels were opaque in these areas. But all the extra enamel in Vienna is opaque, including the saints' figures, and the effect of the more intense colours is "lurid" and "offends our eyes because of its crudity". When the pin is removed and the small doors opened, there is now nothing to see but "a flat layer of plaster, with a sheet of nineteenth-century paper or vellum in front of it". Whatever was designed to be displayed has now gone; it must have been flat, and was perhaps another relic, probably a textile, or a picture on vellum. The Veil of Veronica, in either form, is a possibility; the face of Christ at the top in a circular setting often represents this. Outside the doors the foliate border of the front is continued, uninterrupted by figures. Below two of the angels with trumpets can be seen, with an unpopulated stretch of the green hillside, and below it the back of the castle base, which has apparently had another arched "leg" in the centre crudely removed, leaving a jagged edge, and also making the reliquary rather less stable. ## Goldsmith The maker of the work is unknown; it is not signed or marked, and goldsmiths of the period rarely did this. There are a number of goldsmiths' names known from accounts and other records, but none of the few surviving works can be attached to a particular maker. Paris was the centre of production for the great numbers of joyaux, secular and religious, produced for the extended Valois royal family and other buyers. Berry and his brothers and nephews had goldsmiths on salaries or retainers for what must have been a continuous flow of commissions, whose results are tersely catalogued in various inventories of the period, but of which there are now only a handful of survivals. Only one item mentioned in the records of the Berry collection might match the reliquary, but this was made after 1401, which conflicts with the date suggested by the heraldry. Another possibility is that the reliquary was made and given as a gift, as many such pieces were, in between inventories. ### Techniques The reliquary exuberantly exploits the ronde bosse or "encrusted" enamelling technique, which involves creating small three-dimensional figures coated in enamel on a metal core, often just gold wire. The technique was a recent innovation which the goldsmiths working for the Valois were pushing to its limits at the end of the 14th century. The main colour of enamel used is a lead-based white, which had also only been developed a decade or two at most before the date of the reliquary, and was evidently very fashionable at the end of the century. White dominates the few surviving large enamels in ronde bosse dated to the period beginning about 1380 and ending about 1410, used as here for both the clothes and flesh of the figures. Gold is used for their hair, and other enamel colours are mostly used at the neck and cuffs to demarcate between white robes and white flesh; "throughout, colour is used in a very considered way"; "a controlled use of red includes the alternation of rubies and pearls", except where "a single sapphire interrupts this rhythm" above God the Father. Blue, an important enamel colour in other works, is almost entirely absent here, perhaps so as not to overshadow the large sapphires. Other techniques are also used with a great degree of skill; the large figures on the rear are chased, with St Michael's wings being represented on the flat surface of the door in delicate stippled or pointillé work using punches, which is too detailed to see in most photographs, and indeed hard to see on the original. Michael's body is also feathered, stopping at the neck, ankles and wrists, a "most exceptional feature" often referred to as "feather tights", that perhaps borrows from the costumes of liturgical dramas. Other elements were cast in small moulds, and most of the visible gold has been burnished to give a smooth and shining appearance. ## Patron Jean, duc de Berry (1340–1416), or the "excellent puissant Prince Jehan filz de roy de France Duc de Berry" ("excellent and powerful prince Jean, son of the king of France, Duke of Berry"), as his secretary inscribed one of his manuscripts, was the third of the four sons of King John II of France—Charles V, Louis I, Duke of Anjou (1339–1384), Berry and Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy (1342–1404). All commissioned great numbers of works of art in various media, and in particular spent huge sums on works in gold and silver. Although it is Berry who is especially remembered as a patron, partly because he specialized in illuminated manuscripts which have little value in their materials and so have not been recycled, his brother Louis of Anjou had over 3,000 pieces of plate at one point. These included wholly secular pieces with sculptures in enamel that can only be imagined by comparison as regards technique to the handful of reliquaries, like the Holy Thorn Reliquary, that have survived from the period, and as regards subject matter to tapestries and some secular illuminated manuscripts. There are extremely detailed inventories of Berry's possessions including ones from 1401–1403 and 1413–1416, however none contain an entry whose description matches the reliquary. Soon after Berry's death in 1416, the bulk of his treasures were seized and melted down by the English, who were occupying much of northern France after their victory at the Battle of Agincourt the previous year. That the reliquary escaped this fate suggests it may have been given away by Berry, perhaps to his Burgundian cousins, in whose family it is next recorded (the Burgundian heiress Mary of Burgundy married the Habsburg Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in 1477). A reliquary that was donated to the church had a better chance of surviving than the similar secular works that are now only known from their descriptions in inventories, where scenes of courtly pleasure were depicted with portrait figures of the princes and their friends. A work belonging to Berry's elder brother Anjou showed the romance of Tristan and Isolde, with King Mark spying on the lovers from a tree above them, giving himself away when they see "the enamelled reflection of his face in the enamelled brook". One work that survived long enough to be recorded in an 18th-century painting had a very similar gold castle as its base, with a paradisal garden within the walls, in this case with trees bearing pearls and red gems. However the rest of the piece was very different in scale, with a single large white enamel figure of the Archangel Michael impaling Satan with a lance-like jewelled cross, completely out of scale with the garden in which he stands. This is the St Michael and the Devil Group, which can be reliably dated to before 1397, when it was given to King Charles VI of France, Berry's nephew, as a New Year's gift by another uncle, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. It later passed to a church at Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where it remained until it was destroyed in 1801. Berry was religious as well as worldly, and collected relics as keenly as other types of objects. By 1397 both of his sons had died, he was in his late fifties, and he had begun to think of his tomb, finally deciding to build a new "Sainte Chapelle" in his capital of Bourges to house it. His collection of relics included objects claimed to be the wedding ring of the Virgin Mary, a cup used at the Wedding at Cana, a piece of the Burning Bush, the body of a child murdered by Herod during the Massacre of the Innocents, and many others. However the provenance of the Holy Thorn, as well as its centrality to the Passion of Christ must have given it a special status. The crown from which the thorn came had been bought in 1239 by Louis IX, both a saint and King of France, from the Latin Emperor in Constantinople, Baldwin II, along with a portion of the True Cross. Both had been in Constantinople since the Muslim Conquest of the Holy Land in the 7th century, and may very well be the same relics that Bishop Paulinus of Nola saw in Jerusalem in 409. There are a number of other thorn relics said to have come from the relic in the Paris Sainte Chapelle, including the far smaller Salting Reliquary in the British Museum, a French pendant of about 1340. Berry may have kept the reliquary with him on his round of visits to his many castles and palaces, or it may have been kept in a chapel, perhaps the Bourges Sainte Chapelle, built in emulation of the king's Paris Sainte Chapelle, where the Crown of Thorns itself was kept. The reliquary is relatively small and would almost certainly have had a custom-made carrying case like that for the Royal Gold Cup, in which the cup came to the British Museum. ## Gallery

William Hely

Royal Australian Air Force senior commander

Air Vice Marshal William Lloyd Hely, CB, CBE, AFC (24 August 1909 – 20 May 1970) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1930 before transferring to the RAAF as a cadet pilot. Hely came to public attention in 1936–37, first when he crashed on a survey flight in the Northern Territory, and later when he undertook two successful missions to locate missing aircraft in the same vicinity. His rescue efforts earned him the Air Force Cross. After occupying staff positions during the early years of World War II, Hely was appointed Officer Commanding No. 72 Wing in Dutch New Guinea in May 1944. Later that year he formed No. 84 (Army Cooperation) Wing, commanding it during the Bougainville campaign until the end of the Pacific War. Hely spent the immediate post-war period on the staff of RAAF Headquarters, Melbourne. From 1951 to 1953 he served as Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Western Area Command in Perth, after which he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was Deputy Chief of the Air Staff from 1953 to 1956, AOC Training Command from 1956 to 1957, and Head of the Australian Joint Services Staff in Washington, D.C. from 1957 to 1960. He then served as Air Member for Personnel (AMP) for six years, his tenure coinciding with a significant increase in manpower to meet commitments in South East Asia and the demands of a major re-equipment program. Having been promoted acting air vice marshal in 1953 (substantive in 1956), he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1964 for his service as AMP. He retired from the Air Force in 1966 and made his home in Canberra, where he died in 1970 at the age of sixty. ## Early career The third child of Prosper Frederick Hely, a storekeeper, and his wife Alice (née Lloyd), William Lloyd (Bill) Hely was born on 24 August 1909 at Wellington, New South Wales. He was educated to Intermediate Certificate level at Mudgee, Wollongong and Rozelle Public Schools, and at Fort Street High School, Petersham. Leaving school in 1926, he worked as a clerk and studied accountancy in his spare time. On 16 February 1927, Hely entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, as one of four cadets sponsored that year by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), which did not yet have its own officer training college. He graduated as a lieutenant on 9 December 1930, and the following day enlisted in the RAAF. As well as the four graduates the Air Force had enrolled in 1927, budgetary constraints imposed during the Great Depression necessitated the transfer from Duntroon to Point Cook of eight other RAAF-sponsored cadets midway through their four-year course, including Alister Murdoch, Bill Garing and Douglas Candy. Initially ranked pilot officer, Hely commenced his flying training course at RAAF Point Cook, Victoria, on 15 January 1931, graduating on 10 December. His early postings as a pilot in 1932 and 1933 were to RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, and RAAF Station Laverton, Victoria. Qualifying in aerial photography, he served at Point Cook from 1933 to 1936. He was then transferred to No. 3 Squadron at Richmond, receiving promotion to flight lieutenant. In April 1936, Hely took command of No. 3 Squadron's North Australia Survey Flight, one of two such flights formed by the Air Force that month to carry out photographic surveys. Flying a twin-engined de Havilland Dragon Rapide (serial number A3-2), Hely departed Richmond on 11 April for Port Hedland, which was to be the flight's base for its initial survey work in Western Australia. Over the Northern Territory, between Newcastle Waters and Wave Hill, he became lost, ran out of fuel, and had to crash land. He and his crew of two were found by RAAF search aircraft ten days later, on 22 April. The Argus had reported that "grave fears" were held for their safety, but they were largely uninjured, Hely having suffered cuts and abrasions to his head and leg. The aircraft was badly damaged and had to be transported back to Richmond in pieces. In February 1937, Hely took part in the search for a missing Stinson airliner that was eventually found in the McPherson Range, Queensland, five of its seven passengers and crew dead. For its 1937 aerial survey program, the RAAF formed the Communications and Survey Flight under No. 1 Aircraft Depot's Recruit Training Squadron at Laverton on 3 May. The flight was divided into Western and Eastern Air Detachments, the former under Hely. Flying a Tugan Gannet, Hely's first task became searching for survey director Sir Herbert Gepp, whose Rapide (A3-2, the same one Hely crash landed the previous year) had gone missing on an inspection flight in the Northern Territory between Tennant Creek and Tanimi. Hely located the downed Rapide on 23 May, guiding in a ground party that was able to clear a makeshift runway and allow Gepp and his team to take off and resume their journey. On 25 September, Hely was again diverted from survey work to search for a lost plane, this time the de Havilland Gipsy Moth of flying doctor Clyde Fenton, who had gone missing north-east of Newcastle Waters. Hely, once more piloting Rapide A3-2, found the Moth three days later and landed to rescue the lost doctor. Fenton was subsequently quoted as saying "I have only the highest praise for the efficient manner in which Hely conducted a difficult search and the skilful way in which he located me and picked me up." The rescue efforts made Hely one of the RAAF's best-known public figures. Completing his posting to the survey flight, he served as adjutant at Laverton in 1938. He was awarded the Air Force Cross on 9 June for "zeal and initiative in searching for Sir Herbert Gepp's party and later for Dr. Fenton when lost in Central Australia". On 29 November 1938, he married secretary Jean McDonald at St Aidan's Anglican Church in Launceston, Tasmania; the couple had two daughters. Hely spent the following year in Britain, attending the Royal Air Force Staff College, Andover, and was promoted to squadron leader in September. ## World War II At the outbreak of World War II, Hely was attached to the operations room at RAF Coastal Command. On his return to Australia in January 1940, he was appointed Staff Officer Plans at RAAF Headquarters, Melbourne. In October, he joined the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Bill Bostock, as a delegate to a defence conference in Singapore. The Australian contingent found the local forces ill-prepared for an attack by the Japanese and recommended significant increases in air capability, both in Australia and in the Pacific Islands, to meet the threat. Hely was promoted to temporary wing commander the following January, and was the ranking Air Force delegate at a series of staff talks in Batavia and Singapore regarding the defence of the Dutch East Indies. He became Director of Operations at RAAF Headquarters in August. His promotion to acting group captain was announced on 17 February 1942. Two days later, the Japanese bombed Darwin, Northern Territory; Hely circulated a memo early the next month to all commands on the lessons learnt from the raid. He was posted to Darwin in May to join North-Western Area headquarters as senior air staff officer, and was granted the temporary rank of group captain in January 1943. Hely returned to RAAF Headquarters in March to become Director of Air Staff Plans. In May 1944, Hely assumed command of No. 72 Wing at Merauke, Dutch New Guinea, succeeding Group Captain Allan Walters. Comprising fighter and dive-bomber squadrons, the wing had been established to undertake air defence and patrol tasks in and around western New Guinea. Hely departed Merauke in September 1944 to establish an army cooperation formation, No. 84 Wing, in Cairns, Queensland. It was one of two such wings formed by the RAAF in the South West Pacific Theatre late in World War II. They were, as described by the official history of the RAAF in the Pacific, "essentially non-offensive in character", responsible for reconnaissance, artillery spotting, supply drops to ground forces, spraying DDT to combat malaria, and guiding close support aircraft to their objectives. The wing could also carry out its own strikes on "targets of opportunity". No. 84 Wing comprised No. 5 (Tactical Reconnaissance) Squadron, No. 17 Air Observation Post Flight, No. 10 Communication Unit (subsequently renamed No. 10 Local Air Supply Unit), and No. 39 Operational Base Unit. It deployed to Torokina in October to support Australian troops during the Bougainville campaign. No. 5 Squadron, equipped with CAC Boomerangs and Wirraways, was assigned to mark targets for F4U Corsairs of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Between December 1944 and January 1945, the wing lost one Auster, one Wirraway, and one Boomerang on operations. Despite shortages of pilots and equipment, Hely's formation was generally able to keep pace with the army's requirements. By the end of June 1945, it had flown over 4,000 sorties. ## Post-war career Hely relinquished command of No. 84 Wing on 12 August 1945 and returned to RAAF Headquarters in October. He was by this time among a coterie of officers at group captain level, including Val Hancock, Alister Murdoch and Bill Garing, earmarked by the Australian Air Board for leadership roles in the post-war RAAF, which was to shrink rapidly with demobilisation. At RAAF Headquarters, Hely was appointed deputy director of Operations, in which capacity he served on a committee to investigate proposals for an officer training college, later established as RAAF College, Point Cook. Along with Hely, all officers associated with the proposal's examination were former Duntroon students, including the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, Air Commodore Frank Bladin, the Director of Postings, Group Captain Murdoch, and the Director of Training, Group Captain Paddy Heffernan. Another Duntroon graduate, Air Commodore Hancock, became the college's first commandant. Hely was appointed Director of Organisation and Staff Duties in 1946. That November, he became Director of Postings. The following year, he took up the position of Director of Personal Services, before departing for Britain in December 1948 to study at the Imperial Defence College, London. Returning to Melbourne, Hely served as deputy to the Air Member for Personnel from January 1950. He became an aide-de-camp to King George VI in June 1951. In September, he was appointed Officer Commanding Western Area, Perth, taking up his new post in mid-October. He was promoted to acting air commodore in July 1952, becoming Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Western Area. His rank was made permanent in September, and the same month he was appointed aide-de-camp to Queen Elizabeth II. Among Hely's duties as AOC Western Area was coordinating air support for the British atomic test on Montebello in October 1952, including supply and observation flights by Dakotas of No. 86 (Transport) Wing. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Coronation Honours promulgated on 1 June 1953, for his war service and his work during the Montebello test. In August, he was named Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (DCAS), with the acting rank of air vice marshal, effective from October; he replaced Air Vice Marshal Hancock. Between October 1953 and February 1954, the RAAF underwent major organisational change, as it transitioned from a geographically based command-and-control system to one based on function, resulting in the establishment of Home (operational), Training, and Maintenance Commands. At the same time, RAAF Headquarters in Melbourne was absorbed by the Department of Air in Canberra. Hely was acting Air Member for Personnel from 3 January to 7 March 1955, between the terms of Air Vice Marshals Val Hancock and Fred Scherger. On 24 January 1956, he became AOC Training Command, taking over from Air Vice Marshal Murdoch. He was succeeded as DCAS by Air Vice Marshal Douglas Candy. Hely's rank of air vice marshal became substantive on 5 September. In January 1957, Point Cook retired its last de Havilland Tiger Moth trainers, signalling the end of the biplane era in the RAAF. That May, Hely was seconded to the Department of Defence and posted to Washington, D.C., to head up the Australian Joint Services Staff. He was succeeded as AOC Training Command by Air Vice Marshal Ian McLachlan. Hely became Air Member for Personnel (AMP) on 28 March 1960, taking over from the acting AMP, Air Commodore Frank Headlam. Responsible for the Personnel Branch of the RAAF, the position of AMP occupied a seat on the Air Board, the service's controlling body that comprised its senior officers and was chaired by the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS). The Air Force expanded greatly during Hely's term as AMP, owing to Australia's increasing commitment to the security of South East Asia, and the most significant rearmament program the RAAF had undertaken outside of World War II. Its permanent establishment increased from a steady 15,000 or so in the 1950s to over 18,000 by 1966. Hely himself initiated a scheme to attract staff from the Royal Air Force, which was suffering cutbacks, by opening a recruitment office in London and taking advantage of the Australian government's assisted passage scheme to import trained personnel and their families. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1964 New Year Honours for his "tactful and careful handling of personnel matters", and for having "done much to improve the manning level of the Air Force". As AMP, Hely put forward proposals to increase the number of diploma-qualified engineering and equipment officers in the Air Force. He was also closely involved in deliberations concerning the balance of academic and military studies at the RAAF Academy (previously RAAF College), the outcome of which is considered to have left the course biased towards pure science, rather than its applications to air power. ## Retirement Hely retired on 24 August 1966, after almost forty years in the military. He was succeeded the following day as AMP by Air Vice Marshal Candy. In retirement, Hely was active in the Canberra branch of the Air Force Association. He died of cancer in Canberra on 20 May 1970. Survived by his wife and children, he was accorded an Air Force funeral at St John the Baptist Church and cremated at Norwood Park Crematorium, Gungahlin. The official mourning party included Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CCOSC) General Sir John Wilton, former CCOSC Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger, Secretary of Defence Sir Arthur Tange, CAS Air Marshal Colin Hannah, former CAS Air Marshal Sir Alister Murdoch, Vice Admiral Sir Victor Smith, Air Vice Marshal Brian Eaton, and Group Captain John Waddy. The guns at Duntroon were fired in salute as the cortege left the church.

Banksia prionotes

Species of shrub or tree in the family Proteaceae native to the southwest of Western Australia

Banksia prionotes, commonly known as acorn banksia or orange banksia, is a species of shrub or tree of the genus Banksia in the family Proteaceae. It is native to the southwest of Western Australia and can reach up to 10 m (33 ft) in height. It can be much smaller in more exposed areas or in the north of its range. This species has serrated, dull green leaves and large, bright flower spikes, initially white before opening to a bright orange. Its common name arises from the partly opened inflorescence, which is shaped like an acorn. The tree is a popular garden plant and also of importance to the cut flower industry. Banksia prionotes was first described in 1840 by English botanist John Lindley, probably from material collected by James Drummond the previous year. There are no recognised varieties, although it has been known to hybridise with Banksia hookeriana. Widely distributed in south-west Western Australia, B. prionotes is found from Shark Bay (25° S) in the north, south as far as Kojonup (33°50′S). It grows exclusively in sandy soils, and is usually the dominant plant in scrubland or low woodland. Pollinated by birds, it provides food for a wide array of vertebrate and invertebrate animals in the autumn and winter months. It is an important source of food for honeyeaters (Meliphagidae), and is critical to their survival in the Avon Wheatbelt region, where it is the only nectar-producing plant in flower at some times of the year. ## Description Banksia prionotes grows as a tree up to 10 m (30 ft) high in southern parts of its distribution, but in northern parts it is usually a shorter tree or spreading shrub, reaching about 4 m (13 ft) in height; it diminishes in size as the climate becomes warmer and drier further north. It has thin, mottled grey, smooth or grooved bark, and tomentose young stems. The alternate dull green leaves are 15–27 cm (6–11 in) long, and 1–2 centimetres (1⁄3–2⁄3 in) wide, with toothed leaf margins made up of triangular lobes, and often a wavy surface. Flowers occur in a typical Banksia flower spike, an inflorescence made up of hundreds of small individual flowers, or florets, densely packed around a cylindrical axis. B. prionotes has cream-coloured flowers with a bright orange limb that is not revealed until the flower fully opens. Known as anthesis, this process sweeps through the inflorescence from bottom to top over a period of days, creating the effect of a cream inflorescence that progressively turns bright orange. The old flower parts fall away after flowering finishes, revealing the axis, which may bear up to 60 embedded follicles. Oval or oblong in shape and initially covered in fine hairs, these follicles are from 14 to 20 mm (1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in) long and 6–11 mm (1⁄4–3⁄8 in) wide, and protrude 3–6 mm (1⁄8–1⁄4 in) from the cone. Inside, they bear two seeds separated by a brownish woody seed separator. The matte blackish seeds are wedge-shaped (cuneate) and measure 8–10 mm (3⁄8–3⁄8 in) long by 5–6 mm (1⁄4–1⁄4 in) wide with a membranous 'wing'. The root system consists of a main sinker root, and up to ten lateral roots extending from a non-lignotuberous root crown. The main sinker root grows straight down to the water table; it may be up to 15 m (49 ft) long if the water table is that deep. Typically from 3 to 5 cm (1+1⁄4 to 2 in) in diameter immediately below the root crown, roots become gradually finer with depth, and may be less than half a centimetre (0.2 in) wide just above the water table. Upon reaching the water table, the sinker branches out into a network of very fine roots. The laterals radiate out horizontally from the base of the plant, at a depth of 3–10 cm (1+1⁄4–4 in). They may extend over 5 m (16 ft) from the plant, and may bear secondary laterals; larger laterals often bear auxiliary sinker roots. Lateral roots seasonally form secondary rootlets from which grow dense surface mats of proteoid roots, which function throughout the wetter months before dying off with the onset of summer. ## Taxonomy Banksia prionotes was first published by English botanist John Lindley in the January 1840 issue of his A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony; hence the species' standard author citation is Banksia prionotes Lindl. He did not specify the type material upon which he based the species, but A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony is based primarily upon the collections of early settler and botanist James Drummond. A sheet of mounted specimens at the University of Cambridge Herbarium (CGE), labelled "Swan River, Drummond, 1839" and annotated "Banksia prionotes m" in Lindley's hand, has since been designated the lectotype. Lindley also made no mention of the etymology of the specific epithet, "prionotes", but it is assumed to be derived from the Ancient Greek prion ("saw") and -otes ("quality"), referring to the serrated leaf margins. The most commonly reported common names of B. prionotes are acorn banksia, derived from the resemblance of partly opened inflorescences to acorns; and orange banksia. Other reported common names include saw-toothed banksia and golden banksia Bwongka is a generic Noongar name for Banksia in the Avon River catchment, where B. prionotes is one of several species occurring. No further subspecies or varieties of B. prionotes have been described, and it has no taxonomic synonyms. Its only nomenclatural synonym is Sirmuellera prionotes (Lindl.) Kuntze, which arose from Otto Kuntze's unsuccessful 1891 attempt to transfer Banksia into the new name Sirmuellera. When Carl Meissner published his infrageneric arrangement of Banksia in 1856, he placed B. prionotes in section Eubanksia because its inflorescence is a spike rather than a domed head, and in series Salicinae, a large series that is now considered quite heterogeneous. This series was discarded in the 1870 arrangement of George Bentham; instead, B. prionotes was placed in section Orthostylis, which Bentham defined as consisting of those Banksia species with flat leaves with serrated margins, and rigid, erect styles that "give the cones after the flowers have opened a different aspect". In 1981, Alex George published a revised arrangement that placed B. prionotes in the subgenus Banksia because of its flower spike, section Banksia because its styles are straight rather than hooked, and the series Crocinae, a new series of four closely related species, all with bright orange perianths and pistils. George's arrangement remained current until 1996, when Kevin Thiele and Pauline Ladiges published an arrangement informed by a cladistic analysis of morphological characteristics. Their arrangement maintained B. prionotes in B. subg. Banksia, but discarded George's sections and his series Crocinae. Instead, B. prionotes was placed at the end of series Banksia, in subseries Cratistylis. Questioning the emphasis on cladistics in Thiele and Ladiges' arrangement, George published a slightly modified version of his 1981 arrangement in his 1999 treatment of Banksia for the Flora of Australia series of monographs. To date, this remains the most recent comprehensive arrangement. The placement of B. prionotes in George's 1999 arrangement may be summarised as follows: Banksia : B. subg. Banksia : : B. sect. Banksia : : : B. ser. Salicinae (11 species, 7 subspecies) : : : B. ser. Grandes (2 species) : : : B. ser. Banksia (8 species) : : : B. ser. Crocinae : : : : B. prionotes : : : : B. burdettii : : : : B. hookeriana : : : : B. victoriae : : : B. ser. Prostratae (6 species, 3 varieties) : : : B. ser. Cyrtostylis (13 species) : : : B. ser. Tetragonae (3 species) : : : B. ser. Bauerinae (1 species) : : : B. ser. Quercinae (2 species) : : B. sect. Coccinea (1 species) : : B. sect. Oncostylis (4 series, 22 species, 4 subspecies, 11 varieties) : B. subg. Isostylis (3 species) Since 1998, American botanist Austin Mast has been publishing results of ongoing cladistic analyses of DNA sequence data for the subtribe Banksiinae, which includes Banksia. With respect to B. prionotes, Mast's results are fairly consistent with those of both George and Thiele and Ladiges. Series Crocinae appears to be monophyletic, and B. hookeriana is confirmed as B. prionotes' closest relative. Overall, however, the inferred phylogeny is very different from George's arrangement. Early in 2007, Mast and Thiele initiated a rearrangement of Banksiinae by publishing several new names, including subgenus Spathulatae for the species of Banksia that have spoon-shaped cotyledons; in this way they also redefined the autonym B. subgenus Banksia. They have not yet published a full arrangement, but if their nomenclatural changes are taken as an interim arrangement, then B. prionotes is placed in subgenus Banksia. ### Hybrids #### With Banksia hookeriana Banksia prionotes readily hybridises with Banksia hookeriana (Hooker's banksia) under experimental conditions, indicating that these species have highly compatible pollen. The cultivar B. 'Waite Orange' is believed to be such a hybrid, having arisen by open pollination during a breeding experiment conducted at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute of the University of Adelaide in 1988. Banksia prionotes × hookeriana has also been verified as occurring in the wild, but only in disturbed locations. The two parent species have overlapping ranges and are pollinated by the same honeyeater species; and though preferring different soils, they often occur near enough to each other for pollinators to move between them. It therefore appears that the only barrier to hybridisation in undisturbed areas is the different flowering seasons: B. prionotes has usually finished flowering by the end of May, whereas flowering of B. hookeriana usually does not begin until June. In disturbed areas, however, the increased runoff and reduced competition mean extra nutrients are available, and this results in larger plants with more flowers and a longer flowering season. Thus the flowering seasons overlap, and the sole barrier to interbreeding is removed. The resultant F1 hybrids are fully fertile, with seed production rates similar to that of the parent species. There is no barrier to backcrossing of hybrids with parent species, and in some populations this has resulted in hybrid swarms. This raises the possibility of the parent species gradually losing their genetic integrity, especially if the intermediate characteristics of the hybrid offer it a competitive advantage over the parent species, such as a wider habitat tolerance. Moreover, speciation might occur if the hybrid's intermediate characteristics allow it to occupy a habitat unsuited to both parents, such as an intermediate soil type. Banksia prionotes × hookeriana hybrids have characteristics intermediate between the two parents. For example, the first putative hybrids studied had a habit "like that of gigantic B. hookerana [sic]", having inherited the size of B. prionotes, together with B. hookeriana's tendency to branch from near the base of the trunk. Similarly, the infructescences were like B. prionotes in size, but had persistent flowers like B. hookeriana. Inflorescences and leaves were intermediate in size and shape, and bark was like that of B. prionotes. #### Other putative hybrids During data collection for The Banksia Atlas project, a single presumed natural hybrid between B. prionotes and B. lindleyana (porcupine banksia), with fruit like B. lindleyana but leaves intermediate between the two parents, was found north of Kalbarri National Park. At the time this was considered an important discovery, as the parent species were thought not to be closely related. Mast's analyses, however, place them both in a clade of eight species, though B. lindleyana remains less closely related to B. prionotes than B. hookeriana. Hybrids of B. prionotes with B. menziesii (firewood banksia) have also been produced by artificial means, and presumed natural hybrids have been recorded. ## Distribution and habitat Banksia prionotes occurs throughout much of the Southwest Botanical Province, occurring both along the west coast and well inland, and ranging from Shark Bay (25°30′S) in the north, to Kojonup (33°50'S) and Jerramungup (34°24'S 118°55'E) in the south and south-east respectively. It grows among tall shrubland or low woodland, mostly in the swales and lower slopes of dunes, and shows a very strong preference for deep white or yellow sand. It is most common amongst the kwongan heath of the Geraldton Sandplains north of Jurien; it has a fairly continuous distribution there, often as the dominant species, and extends inland to around the 350 mm isohyet. On the Swan Coastal Plain to the south, its distribution is discontinuous, being largely confined to patches of suitable sand in the narrow transition zone where tuart forest gives way to jarrah forest. With the exception of a population at Point Walter (32°00′S), it does not occur on the sandplain south of the Swan River. The soils east of the Darling Scarp are generally too heavy for this species, with the exception of some isolated pockets of deep alluvial or aeolian yellow sand. B. prionotes thus has a very patchy distribution east of the scarp. This area nonetheless accounts for around half of its geographic range, with the species extending well to the south and south-east of the scarp. In total, the species occurs over a north–south distance of about 815 km (500 mi), and an east–west distance of about 125 km (80 mi). The species is almost totally restricted to the swales and lower slopes of dunes. Various reasons for this have been proposed; on the one hand, it has been argued that its dependence on ground water necessitates that it grow only where ground water is relatively near the surface; on the other hand, it has been suggested that it cannot survive in higher parts of the landscape because fires are too frequent there. The latter hypothesis is supported by the recent expansion of B. prionotes along road verges of the Brand Highway, where fires are relatively rare. Despite B. prionotes' occurrence in lower parts of the landscape, it does not occur in areas prone to flooding, because of its intolerance of heavy soils, and because extended periods of flooding kill seedlings. However, recent falls of the water table on the Swan Coastal Plain have seen B. prionotes replace the more water-loving Banksia littoralis in some areas that were previously flood-prone. ## Ecology and physiology ### Growth The structure of the root system, comprising a vertical tap root and multiple horizontal laterals, develops in the seedling's first year. Thereafter, the sinker and laterals continue to lengthen, and new laterals appear. There are only three to five laterals at first, but this number typically increases to eight to ten within ten years. During the first winter, there is a great deal of root system development, especially elongation of the sinker root, but almost no shoot growth. By summer, the sinker root has generally almost reached the water table, and shoot growth increases substantially. Around February, the shoot forms a resting bud, and growth then ceases until October. On resumption of shoot growth, the shoots grow rapidly for a short time, while the plant is under little water stress; then, with the onset of water stress, the plants settles into a long period of slower shoot growth. This pattern of summer-only shoot growth is maintained throughout the life of the plant, except that in mature plants, seasonal shoot growth may cease with the formation of a terminal inflorescence rather than a resting bud. Inflorescence development continues after shoot growth ceases, and flowering commences in February or March. March and April are the peak months for flowering, which ends in July or August. Annual growth increases exponentially for the first eight years or so, but then slows down as resources are diverted into reproduction and the greater density of foliage results in reduced photosynthetic efficiency. ### Nutrition and metabolism The root structure of B. prionotes exhibits two common environmental adaptations. Firstly, this species is phreatophytic, that is, its long taproot extends down to the water table, securing it a continuous water supply through the dry summer months, when surface water is generally unavailable. This not only helps ensure survival over summer, but allows plants to grow then. Though the supply of water is the taproot's primary function, the ground water obtained typically contains ionic concentrations of chloride, sodium, magnesium, calcium and potassium that are adequate for the plant's nutritional needs. The other common adaptation is the possession of cluster roots, which allow it to extract enough nutrients to survive in the oligotrophic soils in which it grows. With the onset of autumn rains, the lateral roots form dense surface mats of cluster roots in the top 20 cm (8 in) of soil, just below the leaf litter, where most minerals are concentrated. These roots exude chemicals that enhance mineral solubility, greatly increasing the availability and uptake of nutrients in impoverished soils such as the phosphorus-deficient native soils of Australia. For as long as surface water is available, they take in water and a range of minerals. In B. prionotes they are principally responsible for the uptake of malate, phosphate, chloride, sodium and potassium. When soils are high in nitrates, they may also perform some nitrate reductase activities, primarily the conversion of ammonium into amino acids such as asparagine and glutamine. The uptake of nutrient and water by the cluster roots peaks through winter and spring, but ceases when the upper layer of soil dries out in summer. The cluster roots are then allowed to die, but the laterals are protected from desiccation by a continuous supply of water from the sinker root. The water supplied to the laterals by the sinker root is continually lost to the soil; thus this plant facilitates the movement of ground water from the water table into surface soil, a process known as hydraulic redistribution. Cluster roots have been estimated as comprising about 30% of total root biomass in this species; the seasonal production of so much biomass, only for it to be lost at the end of the growing season, represents a substantial investment by the plant, but one that is critical in the competition for nutrients. During winter, asparagine is metabolised immediately, but other nutrients, especially phosphates and glutamine, are removed from the xylem sap and stored in mature stem, bark and leaf tissues for release back into the xylem just before shoot growth begins in mid summer. This is also the time when the oldest leaves senesce and die, returning nutrients to the plant at the time when they are needed most. When glutamine eventually reaches the leaves, it is broken down and used to synthesise protein and non-amide amino acids such as aspartate, threonine, serine, glutamate, glycine, alanine and cystine. Together with sucrose and other solutes, these are then circulated in the phloem. The phloem sap of B. prionotes is unusual in having an extremely low ratio of potassium to sodium cations, and very low concentrations of phosphate and amino acids compared to chloride and sulfate anions. The low levels of potassium and phosphate reflect the extremely low availability of these minerals in the soil. The unusually high levels of sodium and chloride—at concentrations usually only seen under saline conditions—may be due to the necessity of maintaining turgor pressure; that is, with so little potassium and phosphate available, and that needed in the building of new tissue, B. prionotes is forced to circulate whatever other ions are available in order to maintain turgor. ### Breeding system Flowering begins in February and is usually finished by the end of June. The species has an unusually low rate of flowering: even at the peak of its flowering season, it averages less than seven inflorescences per plant flowering at any one time. Individual flowers open sequentially from bottom to top within each inflorescence, the rate varying with the time of day: more flowers open during the day than at night, with a peak rate of around two to three florets per hour during the first few hours of daylight, when honeyeater foraging is also at its peak. The flowers are fed at by a range of nectarivorous birds: mainly honeyeaters, including the New Holland honeyeater (Phylidonyris novaehollandiae), white-cheeked honeyeater (P. nigra), brown honeyeater (Lichmera indistincta), singing honeyeater (Lichenostomus virescens), tawny-crowned honeyeater (Gliciphila melanops) and red wattlebird (Anthochaera carunculata). Lorikeets have also been observed feeding at the flowers, as have insects, including ants, bees, and aphids. Of these, evidence suggests that only birds are effective pollinators. Insects apparently play no role in pollination, since inflorescences do not form follicles when birds are excluded in pollinator exclusion experiments; and pollination by mammals has never been recorded in this species. Honeyeaters prefer to forage at individual flowers which have only just opened, as these offer the most nectar. As they probe for nectar, honeyeaters end up with large quantities of pollen on their beaks, foreheads and throats, some of which they subsequently transfer to other flowers. This transfer is quite efficient: flowers typically lose nearly all their pollen within four hours of opening, and pollen is deposited on the majority of stigmata. Around 15% of these stigmata end up with pollen lodged in the stigmatic groove, a prerequisite to fertilisation. The structure of the Banksia flower, with the style end functioning as a pollen presenter, suggests that autogamous self-fertilisation must be common. In many Banksia species, the risk of this occurring is reduced by protandry: a delay in a flower's receptivity to pollen until after its own pollen has lost its viability. There is dispute, however, over whether this occurs in B. prionotes: one study claimed to have confirmed "protandrous development", yet recorded high levels of stigmatic receptivity immediately after anthesis, and long pollen viability, observations that are not consistent with protandry. If it does occur, protandry does nothing to prevent geitonogamous self-pollination: that is, pollination with pollen from another flower on the same plant. In fact, when birds forage at B. prionotes, only about a quarter of all movements from inflorescence to inflorescence involve a change of plant. Geitonogamous self-pollination must therefore occur more often in this species than cross-pollination. This does not imply high rates of self-fertilisation, however, as the species appears highly self-incompatible: although pollen grains will germinate on flowers of the self plant, they apparently fail to produce pollen tubes that penetrate the style. Even where cross-pollination does occur, fertilisation rate is fairly low. It is speculated that this is related to "a variety of chemical reactions at the pollen-stigma interface". Cone production varies a great deal from year to year, but, as a result of its low flowering rate, is generally very low. However, there are typically a very high number of follicles per cone, leading to relatively high seed counts. There is some seed predation, primarily from the curculionid weevil Cechides amoenus. ### Response to fire Like many plants in south-west Western Australia, B. prionotes is adapted to an environment in which bushfire events are relatively frequent. Most Banksia species can be placed in one of two broad groups according to their response to fire: reseeders are killed by fire, but fire also triggers the release of their canopy seed bank, thus promoting recruitment of the next generation; resprouters survive fire, resprouting from a lignotuber or, more rarely, epicormic buds protected by thick bark. B. prionotes is unusual in that it does not fit neatly into either of these groups. It lacks a lignotuber or thick bark, and so cannot be considered a resprouter; yet it may survive or escape some fires because of its height, the sparseness of its foliage, and because it occurs in dune swales where fire are cooler and patchier. On the other hand, it is not a typical reseeder either, because of its relatively low fire mortality rates, and because it is only weakly serotinous: although fire promotes seed release, seed release still occurs in the absence of fire. The actual degree of serotiny and fire mortality in B. prionotes varies with latitude, or, more likely, climate. Observations suggest that it is always killed by fire in the north of its range, which is relatively hot and dry, and where individual plants are usually smaller, but may survive fire in the cooler, moister, south. Moreover, it is essentially non-serotinous in the south, since all seed is released by the end of the second year, but seed retention increases steadily to the north, and at the northern end of its range, it typically takes around four years for a plant to release half of its seed in the absence of bushfire, with some seed retained for up to 12 years. A number of other characteristics of B. prionotes can be understood as secondary responses to weak serotiny. For example, winter flowering ensures that seed is ripe by the beginning of the bushfire season; this is very important for weakly serotinous species, which rely heavily upon the current year's seed crop. Another example is the deciduous florets of B. prionotes. In strongly serotinous species, the old florets are retained on the cones, where they function as fire fuel, helping to ensure that follicles reach temperatures sufficient to trigger seed release. In B. prionotes, however, seed release is triggered at relatively low temperatures: in one study, 50% of follicles opened at 265 °C (509 °F), and 90% opened at 330 °C (626 °F); in contrast, the closely related but strongly serotinous B. hookeriana required 340 and 500 °C (644 and 932 °F) respectively. Floret retention would therefore be to no advantage, and might even prevent seed from escaping spontaneously opened follicles. Seed release in B. prionotes is promoted by repeated wetting of the cones. The seed separator that holds the seeds in place is hygroscopic; its two wings pull together then wet, then spread and curl inwards as it dries out again. In doing so, it functions as a lever, gradually prying seeds out of a follicle over the course of a wet-dry cycle. This adaptation ensures that seed release following fire is delayed until the onset of rain, when germination and seedling survival rates are higher. Because of its higher susceptibility and lower reliance on fire for reproduction, the optimal fire interval for B. prionotes is higher than for other Banksia species with which it occurs. One simulation suggested an interval of 18 years was optimal for B. prionotes, compared to 15 years for B. hookeriana and 11 years for B. attenuata. The same model suggested that B. prionotes is quite susceptible to reductions in fire intervals. On the other hand, it shows little susceptibility to increases in fire interval: although senescence and death are often observed in plants older than about 30 years, healthy stands have been observed that have escaped fire for 50 years. These stands have a multi-aged structure, demonstrating the occurrence of successful inter-fire recruitment. Fire response may also furnish an explanation for the evolution of this species. The differences in fire regime between dune crests and swales would have created different evolutionary pressures, with plants on crests adapting to frequent hot fires by becoming strongly serotinous, and plants in swales adapting to patchier, cooler fires with weaker serotiny. Speciation would be made possible by the much reduced genetic exchange between crest plants and swale plants, although evidence suggests that there was some introgression at first. Eventually, however, the need for weakly serotinous plants to produce ripe seed by the bushfire season would have brought forward its flowering season until the flowering seasons no longer overlapped; thus a phenological barrier to exchange was erected, allowing the two populations to drift independently of each other. ## Conservation Banksia prionotes is susceptible to a number of threatening processes. It is highly susceptible to Phytophthora cinnamomi dieback; wild populations are harvested commercially by the cut flower industry; and some of its range is subject to land clearing for urban or agricultural purposes. An assessment of the potential impact of climate change on this species found that severe change is likely to lead to a reduction in its range of around 50% by 2080; and even mild change is projected to cause a reduction of 30%; but under mid-severity scenarios the distribution may actually grow, depending on how effectively it can migrate into newly habitable areas. However, this study does not address the potential of climate change to alter fire regimes; these have already been impacted by the arrival of humans, and this change is thought to have led to a decline in the abundance and range of B. prionotes. The species as a whole is not considered particularly vulnerable to these factors, however, as it is so widely distributed and common. Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation does not consider it to be rare, and has not included it on their Declared Rare and Priority Flora List. It nonetheless has high conservation importance in at least one context: it is a keystone mutualist in the Avon Wheatbelt, where it is the only source of nectar during a critical period of the year when no other nectar-producing plant is in flower. The loss of B. prionotes from the region would therefore mean the loss of all the honeyeaters as well, and this would affect the many other species of plants that rely on honeyeaters for pollination. The primary vegetation community in which Banksia prionotes occurs in the Avon Wheatbelt is considered a priority ecological community, and is proposed for formal gazetting as a threatened ecological community under the name "Banksia prionotes and Xylomelum angustifolium low woodlands on transported yellow sand". Although currently in near-pristine and static condition, it is considered at risk due to a large number of threatening processes, including land clearing, landscape fragmentation, rising soil salinity, grazing pressure, competition with weeds, changes to the fire regime, rubbish dumping, and P. cinnamomi dieback. ## Cultivation Described as "an outstanding ornamental species" by ASGAP, its brightly coloured, conspicuous flower spikes make B. prionotes a popular garden plant. It is good for attracting honeyeaters to the garden, and sometimes flowers twice a year. A low growing dwarf form which reaches 1 m (3.3 ft) high is available in Western Australia, sold as "Little Kalbarri Candles". It is fairly easy to grow in areas with a Mediterranean climate, but does not do well in areas with high summer humidity. It requires a sunny position in well-drained soil, and tolerates at least moderate frost. It should be pruned lightly, not below the green foliage, as it tends to become straggly with age otherwise. Seeds do not require any treatment prior to sowing, and take 21 to 35 days to germinate. The species is also considered ideal for cut flower production, as its flowers fulfill the commercial criteria of terminal blooms and a long stem length. As such it is one of the most popular banksias for cut flower production, with commercial crops grown in Israel, Victoria, South Australia and Hawaii.

Maraba coffee

Brewed beverage

Maraba coffee (Kinyarwanda: Ikawa ya Maraba; French: Café de Maraba) is grown in the Maraba area of southern Rwanda. Maraba's coffee plants are the Bourbon variety of the Coffea arabica species and are grown on fertile volcanic soils on high-altitude hills. The fruit is handpicked, mostly during the rainy season between March and May, and brought to a washing station in Maraba, where the coffee beans are extracted and dried. At several stages, the beans are sorted according to quality. The farmers receive credits based on the amount and quality of the beans they provide. The beans are sold to various roasting companies, with the best beans going to Union Coffee Roasters of the United Kingdom, who produce a Fairtrade-certified brand and Community Coffee of the United States. Rwanda Smallholder Specialty Coffee Company (RWASHOSCCO) buys from Maraba and sells to the domestic market. Maraba coffee is also brewed into a beer. About 500,000 smallholder farmers grow the coffee plants under the Abahuzamugambi cooperative, founded in 1999. Since 2000, the cooperative has been supported by the National University of Rwanda (NUR) and the PEARL. The cooperative has improved coffee quality and penetrated the speciality market. ## History ### Origins Rwandans have been growing coffee since colonial times, but until 1999 the product was classed below Grade C, making it unsellable on the global markets. The farmers did not have the means to wash and prepare their coffee cherries to specifications in a timely manner. Buyers paid US\$0.33 per kilogram, a price that kept the farmers poor. In 1999, 220 coffee growers formed an association in the Maraba district (part of the former Butare Province) to tackle this problem. Many of these farmers had lost family members during the 1994 genocide, while others had husbands in prison, accused of participating in the killings and due to face trial in the traditional gacaca courts. They named the association Abahuzamugambi, a Kinyarwanda word for people who work together to achieve a goal. The farmers hoped that by forming the association, they would increase revenue by selling directly to exporters in Kigali instead of through an intermediary transport company. They divided their profits and used them to buy tools, fertilisers and seeds to increase yields. In 2000, the mayor of Maraba requested development aid from the National University of Rwanda (UNR), based in nearby Butare; the following year UNR helped found the Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL). Several entities supported the PEARL project: USAID, Michigan State University, Texas A&M University and various Rwandan bodies including UNR, the national agricultural research institute (ISAR) and the Kigali Institute of Science, Technology and Management (KIST). PEARL started working with Abahuzamugambi in February 2001 to improve the coffee quality to standards required by the speciality coffee market in the United States. The coffee farmers of Maraba first needed a washing station to remove the slimy sugar-rich outer coating of the coffee bean, under the skin. If this sugar is not removed within 12 hours of picking, it may ferment, and the flavour of the coffee is then impaired. They built the first station in July 2001 in the Cyarumbo sector, close to the main road, with funding from UNR, the Office des Cultures Industrielles du Rwanda (OCIR-Café), ACDI/VOCA, and the Institut des Sciences Agronomiques du Rwanda (ISAR). The opening was late in the harvest season, so only 200 kilograms (441 lb) of that year's harvest were suitable for washing. However, the results were reasonably good, and the station was upgraded to allow more coffee to be processed in 2002. To bring mineral water from Mount Huye to the upgraded station, ACDI/VOCA helped fund a pipeline, which opened in March 2002. A new certification system was introduced for the 2002 harvest to ensure that beans brought to the station were of suitable quality. Around half of the Abahuzamugambi membership attained the certification, which allowed the cooperative to look for serious buyers in the speciality markets of Europe and North America. ### International acceptance PEARL brought a speciality coffee expert to Rwanda, who put them in touch with a seller, Louisiana-based Community Coffee, to help market Maraba. They sent samples to Louisiana, and in June 2002 a representative from Community visited Maraba. Rwandan president Paul Kagame was also present, as the government placed great importance on the project. Community purchased an 18,000 kilogram (40,000 lb) container of Maraba beans at the above-average rate of US\$3 per kilogram. The beans were transported to Louisiana, where they were roasted and blended into one of the company's gourmet coffees. This was the first direct contract between an American roaster and an African coffee cooperative. Comic Relief also took an interest in Maraba. The 2001 Red Nose Day campaign had brought in £55 million for projects in the UK and Africa, some of which they pledged to the Association des Veuves du Genocide (AVEGA), an association of widows of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The charity discovered that many of the Maraba smallholders were also members of AVEGA and could thus provide funding and support. They contacted Union Coffee Roasters (UCR), a British roasting company, whose representatives visited Maraba in 2002 with officials from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO). This group inspected the Maraba site and granted certification, making Maraba coffee the first Rwandan cooperative to gain Fairtrade status. UCR described the coffee as containing "sparkling citrus flavours complemented by deep, sweet chocolate notes" and bought all the remaining produce from the 2002 harvest. UCR distributed its Maraba Coffee in early 2003 via Sainsbury's supermarkets, which sold the product in all 350 of its stores in the run up to that year's Red Nose Day. In 2003, the Abahuzamugambi Cooperative made US\$35,000 in net profits. Of this, 70 percent was divided among the farmers at US\$0.75 per kilogram provided, an amount more than three times that paid to other coffee growers in Rwanda and sufficient to pay for health care and education services which were not previously affordable. The remaining 30 percent was invested back into the cooperative and spent on buying calcium carbonate, an agricultural lime used to reduce acidity in the soil caused by run off of minerals during rainfall. ### Independence Beginning in 2003, PEARL deemed the operation self-sufficient and reduced financial support for the Abahuzamugambi Cooperative. The cooperative provided its growers with loans that helped improve living standards and allowed for livestock investments, affordable medical insurance, and education. A cooperative bank was opened in the village in March, enabling farmers to maintain and manage their own funds locally, rather than having to trek the long distance to Butare. In late 2004, London-based Meantime Brewing began offering a coffee beer made out of beans grown in Maraba. The drink is intended as an alcoholic iced cappuccino or digestif. The head brewer tasted coffees from around the world but decided that the hints of vanilla and chocolate in Maraba coffee made it more suitable than the nutty and bitter coffees from South America. The original beer had an alcohol content of 4 percent and the same caffeine content as coffee, and was described as having a "silky, velvety character". It was sold in larger branches of Sainsbury's and in some pubs and clubs. The beverage was one of only two Fairtrade beers available on the UK market until 2006, when a reduction in the proportion of coffee and an increased alcohol content (now 6 percent) cost it its Fairtrade status. It is still made from Maraba beans. At the time of its launch, Meantime Coffee Porter was the only coffee beer available in the British Isles, and it won the gold medal for the coffee-flavoured beer category at the 2006 Beer World Cup. As the cooperative grew, it built additional washing stations across the area. The first of these was located at Kabuye, and opened in 2004. The third station, at Sovu, became operational one year later in 2005, and the fourth, at Kibingo, in 2007. In 2006, the Swedish Minister for Development Co-operation and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carin Jamtin, visited Maraba to extend cooperation between Sweden and Rwanda and expose Maraba coffee to the Swedish speciality market. In July 2006, a telecentre was opened in Maraba under the coordination of PEARL. USAID, NUR and Washington State University (WSU) Extension's Center to Bridge the Digital Divide (CBDD) provided funding and resources. Three WSU students spent six weeks in Rwanda helping to set up the centre and train the local staff. USAID continued to be involved with the coffee industry in Rwanda, including Maraba, through the Sustaining Partnerships to enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD) programme, launched in 2006. This was a multi-year collaboration with OCIR-Café with the goal of improving access to cooperatives for farmers, and also identifying specific taste characteristics of coffees in different regions of Rwanda. In a 2011 report on geographical indicators for products in Africa, French economist Thierry Coulet wrote that the SPREAD programme was pursuing a designation of origin certification for Rwandan coffee, including that of Maraba in particular. ### Recent years In 2008 Rwanda hosted a Cup of Excellence competition, becoming the first African country to host the event. A national panel tasted and selected a number of premium coffees, which were then scored by a panel of international coffee experts in a cupping event held at Maraba's laboratory in Kizi. The judges gave a Cup of Excellence award to coffees from twenty-four farms, of which three were part of the Maraba coffee cooperative. The Cup of Excellence returned to Rwanda every year from 2010 to 2015 and again in 2018, with Abahuzamugambi ba Kawa farms among the winners on every occasion. Maraba coffee celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2012. The number of growers in the cooperative had reached 1,400 at that point, with assets totalling 250 million Rwandan francs (400,000 US\$ as of 2012). Starting in 2013, the cooperative began an expansion programme. It added 1,550 hectares (3,800 acres) of new coffee growing land by 2015, with the first harvests in the same year. The programme aimed to add up to 2,100 hectares (5,200 acres) to the cooperative's plantation area. Maraba was experiencing increased competition from other growers, as the quantity of quality coffee on the market had expanded. The leaders of the expansion programme therefore made quality a high priority, to maintain the confidence of buyers. ## Geography and climate Maraba coffee is grown in the south of Rwanda at coordinates , roughly 12 kilometres (7 mi) from Butare and 150 kilometres (93 mi) from the capital, Kigali. The project began in the Maraba District of Butare Province, but these entities were replaced under local government organisation in 2006, and the area is now part of Huye District in the Southern Province. The area is very hilly, due to its proximity to the Western Rift Valley and the montane Nyungwe Forest, and features rich volcanic soils. The coffee is grown at altitudes between 1,700 and 2,100 metres (5,577–6,889 ft) above sea level, often on steep hillsides with terrace farming. The area experiences an average of 115 centimetres (45 in) of rainfall annually. The majority of this falls during the rainy season of March to May, the major coffee harvesting season. The high altitude lowers the temperature slightly to an average of about 20 °C (68 °F). There is little seasonal variation. ## Production cycle The main harvesting season for coffee in Rwanda is during the major rainy season, running from March to the end of May. At harvest time, farmers spend most of the day picking cherries by hand. In the evening, they carry them in traditional baskets woven from banana leaves to the washing station, which may be several hours away. Technicians hand-sort the beans to pick out the best cherries, those with a deep red colour, and return the remainder to the grower to be sold on to markets outside the Maraba process at a lower price. The technicians pay the grower US\$0.10 per kilogram. This money accumulates, and the association pays it each fortnight into farmers' bank accounts. The technicians start the washing process immediately, since delay can cause fermentation of the sugary coating surrounding the bean and ruination of the coffee flavour. The beans are first thrown into a deep tank. The best cherries sink to the bottom and pass through a machine that removes their skin. The technicians remove any floating cherries and process them in the same way as the others for the cooperative to sell on the domestic market for less than speciality-coffee price. The beans are fed through one of the cooperative's three de-skinning and selection machines to remove their skins and most of the sugary coating before running the individual beans through a vibrating colander. The colander separates the very highest quality Grade A beans from those labeled Grade B; the two grades are sent separately down the hill in a water chute with a 1 percent gradient. This process allows for further separation of beans based on quality, with around 15 tanks available at the bottom for capture of the different types. The beans are kept submerged, two days for the best and 15–20 hours for the lesser beans, which causes a small amount of fermentation to convert the remainder of the sugar without significantly impairing the flavour. The technicians wash the beans several times to remove the remains of the skin and coating and put them out on shaded racks to dry. Cooperative employees turn the beans regularly as technicians spot and remove bad beans. A longer drying process of up to two weeks in the sun follows (with provision for quick covering in the event of rain), again with constant turning. This last process reduces the water content of the bean from 40 percent to 12 percent. The technicians then move the beans to the technical centre in nearby Kizi. Certain machines, housed in a warehouse up the side of the hill, remove the parchment skins from the beans. Employees take the beans into the adjacent laboratory for the final quality control process – hand sorting – which is carried out by several experienced women. The beans are bagged and labeled according to their quality, and stored in the compound's warehouse to await sale. ## Products and customers As of 2006, Maraba produces 80 short tons (73,000 kg) of export-quality coffee per year, of which 40 tons go to roasters and sellers in the United Kingdom and 40 tons to the United States. The coffee appears in the following products: - Maraba Bourbon coffee, produced by Union Coffee for Sainsbury's and other UK-based outlets. - "New Orleans Jazz" Blend and Hotel blend, two Community Coffee brands containing a blend of Maraba and other coffees. As of 2006, Community are considering launching Maraba as a single origin brand. - Café de Maraba, the brand produced by Rwanda Roasters and sold in upmarket shops in Rwanda, including all Total petrol stations and the Intercontinental Hotel. - Meantime Coffee, the beer produced by Meantime Breweries of London. - Intelligentsia have used the coffee in various blends in 2005, due to their shipment arriving late, but intends also to launch it as a single-origin brand in the future. ## See also - Economics of coffee - History of coffee - International Fairtrade Certification Mark - Kuapa Kokoo

William Brill (RAAF officer)

Royal Australian Air Force officer

William Lloyd Brill, DSO, DFC & Bar (17 May 1916 – 12 October 1964) was a senior officer and bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in the Riverina district of New South Wales, he was a farmer and a member of the Militia before joining the RAAF in 1940. After training in Australia and Canada, he was posted to Britain in 1941 to take part in the air war over Europe. Brill first saw combat with No. 460 Squadron RAAF, flying Vickers Wellington medium bombers. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in May 1942 for attacking a target after his plane was badly damaged by anti-aircraft fire. Following assignment as an instructor with the Royal Air Force (RAF), he returned to the bombing campaign in January 1944 as a flight commander with No. 463 Squadron RAAF, flying Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. Brill's leadership and determination to complete his missions despite damage to his aircraft—on one occasion inflicted by another Lancaster's bombs from above—earned him the Distinguished Service Order. Promoted to wing commander in May 1944, he took over No. 467 Squadron RAAF after the death in combat of its then-commander, Group Captain John Balmer. Brill was awarded a bar to his DFC in July, for his skill in evading three German night fighters. Returning to Australia, he remained in the Air Force after the war and led No. 10 Squadron in 1949–50. He went on to command air bases at Rathmines, Canberra and Townsville during the 1950s and 1960s. Brill served two terms as RAAF Director of Personnel Services, in 1956–59 and 1960–63, by which time he had been promoted to group captain. His final posting was at the Department of Air in Canberra. He died of a heart attack in October 1964. ## Early life Brill was born on 17 May 1916 in the Riverina town of Ganmain, New South Wales. He was the fourth of seven children of farmer Edward Brill and his wife Bertha, who were originally from Victoria. The Brills owned a property called "Clearview", and Bill attended the local school. He completed his education at Yanco Agricultural High, gaining his Intermediate Certificate before joining his brothers in wheat farming. Thickly set and physically strong, he was a keen Australian rules footballer, playing for Ganmain, Grong Grong, and Matong. On 5 January 1939, Brill enlisted in the 21st Light Horse Regiment, a Militia unit, at Narrandera. He was promoted to corporal in May. The previous month he had been tested as a potential air cadet, the interview panel finding him a "quiet country chap" who was "rather slow" but "intelligent". On 11 November 1940, Brill transferred to the RAAF active reserve, known as the Citizen Air Force (CAF). He went through the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), undergoing initial instruction at RAAF Bradfield Park in Sydney. Selected to be a pilot, he received his elementary flying training on De Havilland Tiger Moths at RAAF Station Narrandera. In March 1941, Brill was posted to Canada for advanced instruction on Avro Ansons at No. 3 Service Flying Training School, Calgary. He was commissioned as a pilot officer on 28 July 1941, and sailed to Britain the next month. In October he began converting to Vickers Wellington medium bombers at No. 27 Operational Training Unit, Lichfield, and was assigned to No. 460 Squadron RAAF, which formed at RAF Molesworth the following month. ## Air war in Europe ### First tour of operations Raised under the Article XV provisions of EATS, No. 460 Squadron was one of several nominally Australian formations taking part in RAF Bomber Command's strategic air campaign against Germany. In January 1942, the unit moved from Molesworth to RAF Breighton, Yorkshire. Brill flew as a co-pilot in No. 460 Squadron's first operation, against the German port of Emden in March. He was soon in command of his own Wellington, attacking targets in northern France. On 5 April 1942, he undertook his first sortie against a well-defended city deep in enemy territory, Cologne. He later recorded his apprehension before the raid: > How can I get back from this when others who are better than I'll ever be, have fallen on such targets? Will I funk if I'm in a tight spot? Will I let the rest of the boys down? Who am I to hold the lives of five other men in my hands? On the night of 29/30 May 1942, Brill's was one of 27 aircraft detailed to bomb the Gnome et Rhône, Thomson Houston, and Goodrich factories in the Paris suburb of Gennevilliers. The crews were required to have good visibility of the target area before bombing, to ensure accuracy and reduce civilian casualties. Due to foul weather over the Channel, Brill flew at an altitude of less than 200 feet (60 m) until crossing the French coast. The clouds had begun to clear over Paris and searchlights swept the sky, accompanied by heavy anti-aircraft fire. Most of the bombers released their loads from between 4,000 and 8,000 feet (1,200 and 2,400 m), but Brill dropped to 1,500 feet (460 m) before making his attack. With the bomb bay doors open, his Wellington was struck by flak, damaging the hydraulics and rear gun turret, and leaving one of the 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs hanging after the others dropped on target. Returning to England through more bad weather, he spotted an emergency landing ground and brought the crippled Wellington down with the bomb doors still open and one tyre flat; the plane was later scrapped. Brill's was the only one of four Wellingtons from No. 460 Squadron to find the target area and successfully attack. For his "splendid courage and determination" in pressing home the assault, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on 26 June, the first pilot in his squadron to be decorated. No. 460 Squadron participated in 1,000-bomber raids against Cologne, Essen and Bremen in May and June 1942. Brill was promoted to acting flight lieutenant in July, and completed his first tour of operations, numbering 31 sorties, on 11 August. He was seconded to the RAF as an instructor in November 1942, returning to No. 27 Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. He spent the next eleven months there, leading a training flight and gaining promotion to acting squadron leader in April 1943. In August, he was best man at the wedding of his friend and fellow RAAF pilot, Arthur Doubleday. The press would come to refer to the pair as the "Flying Twins", as their wartime careers closely paralleled one another—both men came from the Riverina district, joined the Air Force together on Remembrance Day 1940, arrived in England in August 1941, flew Wellingtons in No. 460 Squadron, volunteered for second tours in Bomber Command, and received many decorations and promotions in tandem. Doubleday would go on to survive the war and become active in civil aviation. ### Second tour of operations Having volunteered for his second tour, Brill underwent conversion to Handley Page Halifax and Avro Lancaster heavy bombers in the last months of 1943. In the new year, he was appointed a flight commander in No. 463 Squadron RAAF, operating Lancasters out of RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire. Waddington was also home to another Australian squadron, No. 467, and Brill took an active part in the station's raucous mess life. His younger brother Vic, who had joined the RAAF in 1941, was in the same squadron. Brill returned to combat in the middle of the Battle of Berlin, flying his first sortie to the "Big City" on 20 January 1944. The statistical likelihood of surviving an operational tour of 30 missions in Bomber Command was never more than 50%, but loss rates during the Battle of Berlin were far higher. Brill took off for his second mission to Berlin on 27 January. The Lancaster he flew was said to be jinxed, possessed of an engine that lost power in the air but always tested well on the ground, and suffering oxygen failure that killed its rear gunner on the previous sortie. One of the engines did begin to falter before Brill reached Berlin, forcing him to fly lower than normal. Having released his bombs over target, he felt the plane take several strikes that he assumed were anti-aircraft fire but were in fact the incendiaries of a Lancaster flying above. His aircraft's nose, rudder controls, and electricals were all severely damaged, and the port wing was on fire. Having warned his crew to prepare to bail out, Brill dived the Lancaster and succeeded in putting out the flames. The crew was able to remain on board and, after a nine-hour flight, the plane landed back at Waddington. Brill's verdict on the mission was, he wrote later, "not my idea of an evening's entertainment". He flew eleven operations during the Battle of Berlin, including Bomber Command's costliest raid of the war, against Nuremberg in March. On that occasion, one of his engines failed and another was damaged when he had to fly through a cloud of debris from a Lancaster that was blown to pieces directly in his path. By April 1944, No. 463 Squadron had begun to concentrate on targets in France and Belgium as the Allied air campaign shifted focus from strategic bombing to destroying airfields and disrupting lines of communication before the invasion of the continent. On 8 May, Brill was the bombing controller for a raid on an airfield near Brest. The controller was required to arrive ahead of the main Allied force, check that flares marking the target were in place, and warn his fellows if they were bombing inaccurately. By the time Brill had completed this task and gone in himself to attack, the ground defences were fully alert and peppered his Lancaster with 140 bullet holes, but he refused to take evasive action until he had delivered his bombload. Promoted to acting wing commander, Brill assumed control of No. 467 Squadron on 12 May, following the death in combat of its previous commanding officer, Group Captain John Balmer. According to the official history of the RAAF in World War II, Brill "proved a very worthy successor to Balmer both in administration and in the dashing type of leadership which had brought the Waddington squadrons to the fore in No. 5 Group". He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 19 May for "leadership, skill and gallantry of the highest order" and "his determination to make every sortie a success" in spite of frequent damage to his aircraft. Early the next month he led No. 467 Squadron in raids on Axis radar stations in northern France. The unit was in action on D-Day over Pointe du Hoc and, later, clearing a corridor for Allied troops advancing up the Cherbourg peninsula. On the night of 4/5 July, Nos. 463 and 467 Squadrons bombed supply depots for V-weapons near Saint-Leu-d'Esserent. Brill's Lancaster was attacked by three German night fighters, but he was able to evade them with only a few bullets striking his plane. His "fine leadership and courage" during the action earned him a bar to his DFC; the award was promulgated in The London Gazette on 16 January 1945. Brill completed his second tour of operations later in July but stayed on to fly more missions, often mentoring less experienced crews. By now he had earned a reputation for being quite "mad", as he would often circle back and check over his handiwork after a bombing run, rather than making his escape from the target area as quickly as possible. During non-operational periods, he made a habit of taking a Lancaster on a so-called test flight to the southern border of Northern Ireland, where he and his crew would change into civilian clothes, cross into Ireland and stock up on food and liquor for a party back at Waddington; he always made a point of inviting the Air Officer Commanding RAAF Overseas Headquarters, Air Vice Marshal Henry Wrigley, to such events, which Wrigley attended without fail. Brill handed over command of No. 467 Squadron on 12 October 1944, becoming the first man to survive his time as its leader. He had flown a total of 58 missions in Bomber Command when he returned to Australia in the new year. On 29 January 1945 he married Ilma Kitto, a teacher, at Ganmain's Methodist Church. The couple had been engaged since before the war; they later had two sons and a daughter. ## Post-war career Brill remained in the Air Force following the end of hostilities. From February 1946 to August 1947 he served as the first and only commanding officer of the RAAF's newly formed and soon-disbanded Heavy Bomber Crew Conversion Unit at RAAF Station East Sale, Victoria. Little support or direction on its use as a training facility was forthcoming from higher command, and in the summer months its Avro Lincoln bombers were employed in bushfire patrols over East Gippsland, reporting 44 outbreaks in February 1947 alone. Brill transferred from the CAF to the Permanent Air Force in 1948, and reverted to the rank of squadron leader. In March 1949 he became the inaugural commanding officer of a re-formed No. 10 (General Reconnaissance) Squadron, which had been disbanded in 1945 after service throughout World War II. In its new guise the squadron was established from the staff and facilities of RAAF Station Garbutt in Townsville. Brill's main tasks were organising to absorb or close surplus wartime facilities in North Queensland and preparing No. 10 Squadron for search-and-rescue operations. The unit took delivery of its first four Lincoln Mk 30s in September 1949, and Brill handed over command the following January. Raised to substantive wing commander, Brill served as a director at RAAF Staff College in Point Cook, Victoria, until his appointment as Staff Officer to the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Donald Hardman, in March 1952. He was posted to command the Officer Training School (OTS) at RAAF Base Rathmines, New South Wales, in December 1953. In this role he was also the commanding officer of the base. His title changed in May 1956 as Rathmines and OTS were reorganised under the newly established RAAF School of Ground Training, Brill taking charge of the school until July. Considered an empathetic leader, he then became Director of Personnel Services. Promoted to group captain, Brill served throughout 1959 as commanding officer of RAAF Base Canberra before again being appointed Director of Personnel Services. Active in local charities and youth organisations, he became a Freemason and in the early 1960s was assistant commissioner for the Canberra–Monaro Boy Scouts. In January 1964 he assumed command of RAAF Base Townsville, returning to Canberra that October for assignment to the Department of Air. He died of a heart attack at his home in Campbell on 12 October. Survived by his wife and children, Brill was buried in Canberra. He is commemorated by Brill Place, in Gowrie.

Carabane

Village in Senegal

Carabane, also known as Karabane, is an island and a village located in the extreme south-west of Senegal, in the mouth of the Casamance River. This relatively recent geological formation consists of a shoal and alluvium to which soil is added by accumulation in the branches and roots of the mangrove trees which cover most of the island. Along with the rest of Ziguinchor Region, Carabane has a tropical climate, cycling between a dry season and a wet season. The island was once considered an arid location where no useful plants were likely to grow, but it now supports several types of fruit tree, the most common of which are mangos and oranges. Although the nearby Basse Casamance National Park and Kalissaye Avifaunal Reserve have been closed for years because of the Casamance Conflict, Carabane has continued to attract ornithologists interested in its wide variety of birds. Various species of fish are plentiful around the island, but there are very few mammals. The earliest known inhabitants of the island were the Jola, the ethnic group which is still the most populous on the island. The Portuguese were active in the region from the 16th century onwards; however, they did not linger on "Mosquito Island", the mosquitoes and black flies convincing them to establish their trading post in the town of Ziguinchor instead in 1645. On January 22, 1836, the island was ceded to France by the village leader of Kagnout in return for an annual payment of 196 francs. A series of treaties between the French and the leaders of the local peoples ensued; however, the inhabitants of Carabane did not recognize the authority of the treaties imposed upon them, resulting in lootings and abductions among French rice farmers by the Karoninka people. In 1869, Carabane became autonomous, but it merged with Sédhiou in 1886. Since World War II, the population of the island has gradually declined for a variety of reasons including periods of drought, the Casamance Conflict and, more recently, the sinking of the ferry Joola in 2002. Much of the village's ability to trade and receive tourists was lost until 2014, when MV Aline Sitoe Diatta resumed ferry services to the island. Although Carabane was once a regional capital, the village has since become so politically isolated from the rest of the country that it no longer fits into any category of the administrative structure decreed by the Senegalese government. The Jola account for the majority of the island's population and Jola society has no formal hierarchy. The indigenous population was originally animist, but although the sacred groves and fetishes survive as cultural icons of Casamance, the monotheistic belief systems of Catholicism and Islam have become the most widely held in Carabane. The literacy rate is approximately 90%. Students attend a primary school on the island, but must move at least as far as Elinkine to continue their studies. The testimonies of explorers and colonial administrators demonstrate that Carabane has participated in rice cultivation, fishery, trade, and palm wine production for a long time. The rice cycle plays a central economic and religious role in the lives of the population. Palm oil and palm wine are very popular and traditional in the area. The fishery has long been dominated by artisan fishing, which supplies the daily needs of the island's population; however, broader economic possibilities have been exploited since the early 20th century. Although there have been attempts to cultivate a tourism industry on the island, the inhabitants have been reluctant to participate. Carabane was added to the list of historic sites and monuments of Senegal in 2003. ## Toponymy The etymology of Carabane remains unclear. It could be connected to the Wolof word karabané, which means "who speaks a lot", or possibly the Portuguese words casa and acaba, which mean "house" and "finish", respectively. According to this hypothesis, the name means the place "where the houses are finished", a possible allusion to the fact that this village was the first French capital in Basse Casamance. According to other sources, the name comes from karam akam, which means "the other side of the river". These uncertainties are augmented by the instability of the spelling: Karabane with an initial K suggests a Jola or Wolof origin, while Carabane with a C would suggest a Latin derivation, most probably through Portuguese or French. ## Geography ### Location With a total area of 57 square kilometres (22 sq mi), Carabane is the last major island in the mouth of the Casamance River in south-west Senegal. It is situated 12° 32' N latitude and 16° 43' W longitude and is, by way of Elinkine, nearly 60 kilometres (37 mi) away from Ziguinchor, the capital of the region of the same name, and a little over 500 kilometres (310 mi) from Dakar, the country's capital. "Il faut s'armer de patience pour rejoindre l'île de Carabane" is a common French phrase which means "One must have patience to reach the island of Carabane". While this adage continues to hold true, it was even more appropriate in the 19th century when, according to one traveller, a 26-hour boat trip from Rufisque (near Dakar) to Carabane was deemed fairly short, and was credited to a favourable wind. Despite the seemingly close proximity to its neighbouring communities, a motorized pirogue trip to Carabane from Elinkine, the nearest village, takes about thirty minutes; the trip once took an hour and a half by canoe. Carabane may also be accessed by a two- or three-hour boat trip from Ziguinchor. Travelling from Cap Skirring via Cachouane is also possible, but as a detailed map of the region would make clear, the channels of salt water are not easily navigated. ### Geology A recent geological formation, Carabane consists of a shoal and alluvium. The alluvium has developed because of the saltwater streams that cut across the shoal. As pointed out by early French observers, soils in the region are generally composed of sand and clay, differing in mixture and layer according to natural and human factors. However, Carabane seems to be composed entirely of sand. The lack of clay is the reason that architecture on the island employs straw wrapped around wooden frames more often than banco mud bricks. This type of architecture is also common in the villages of Mlomp and Seleki. In this flat and marshy area, the branches and roots of mangrove trees form dams where deposits of oyster shells naturally accumulate along with mud and plant detritus. These tangles help retain soil, a process which expands the island where the power of tidal race would normally have the opposite effect. Rising just over 2 m (6.6 ft), the southern portion of the island is partially flooded during the rainy season and totally submerged every few years. At low tide, mudflats are exposed so that boats with keels are forced to dock a considerable distance from the island. When arriving at Carabane, the Joola had to stop about 500 m (1,600 ft) north of the village in 8 to 10 m (26 to 33 ft) of water. The coastal erosion and salinization affecting the west of Senegal are also a source of concern on the island; signs of erosion have been observed in Carabane since 1849. The house of the government representative on the island has burned down twice; each time it was rebuilt, the site of the building had to be moved further and further inland. The island's erosion is evident when one considers that the original location of the house eventually became flooded, even at low tide. During the dry season the river has a tide-dominated delta, with tidewater reaching 200 kilometres (120 mi) upstream, while it is being concentrated 50% by evaporation. Using wells, freshwater is available at a reasonable depth for irrigation and domestic purposes. Until the installation of a pump in 2006, however, drinking water had to be sent by boat from Elinkine. ### Climate The tropical climate of Basse Casamance cycles between a dry season and a wet season, which usually starts in June and ends in October. Because of the proximity to the ocean, the humidity of the air remains above 40% and contributes to the abundance of vegetation. With the trade winds from the Azores High, the island enjoys a pleasant climate year-round. In the north to north-east, these winds are cool and always wet. Their presence is appreciated by kitesurfers. Agricultural activities, including rice cultivation, depend entirely on rainfall. "Wah uŋejutumu, emit elaatut" is a Jola proverb which means "If a project will not be completed, it will be because the rain did not fall." The invocation of fetishes when there is no rain is part of traditional animist rituals. In recent decades, there has been a general decline in rainfall, which threatens rice production, increases soil salinity, and contributes to the degradation of the mangroves. In May and June, air temperature is around 28 °C (82 °F). In January and February, the coldest months, it is around 24 °C (75 °F). Temperatures of below 18 °C (64 °F) are quite rare. In September, the temperature of surface seawater is 26 °C (79 °F). ### Flora At one time, the island was considered an arid location, where coconuts were the only useful plants likely to flourish and vegetables were difficult to produce. In what has become a tropical climate, vegetation is more abundant than in the north of the country, especially during the wet season. Anxious to attract the attention of the French colonial administration which he judged insufficiently involved in the development of Casamance, administrator Emmanuel Bertrand-Bocandé submitted a report which documented in great detail the plant species then present on the island. Although this report was written in 1849, the information it contains has remained valuable even into the 21st century. Most of Carabane is covered in mangroves, forming an impassable jungle that can only be crossed in constructed passages. Mangroves are among the few species capable of adapting to the highly saline environment, where the quantity of oxygen in the soil is low. In recent decades there has been concern that the mangroves are less prevalent. There are various reasons for the degradation, including crustaceans and the unregulated exploitation of wood. Efforts have been made to safeguard the mangroves and to educate children about their importance. Tourists are not as attracted to the island for its mangroves as for the coconut trees which line its beaches, as featured on many of Carabane's postcards. These palm trees are a valued resource on the island. While not as plentiful as in other parts of Basse Casamance such as Mlomp, trees of the Bombax genus and Malvaceae family (all known as 'kapok' in English) are nonetheless present. Their grey wood is very light and easy to work, for which reasons it is used to construct many items, ranging from doors to dugouts. Jola canoes, which range from 6 to 8 metres (20 to 26 ft) in length, are carved by adzes entirely out of one tree each, unlike the traditional Senegalese pirogue. As for fruit trees, mangos and oranges are the most populous. Prickly pears, flamboyants, and colourful bougainvilleas brighten the scenery of hotels and camps on the island. Various organizations have contributed to the deforestation of the island. ### Fauna The wide variety of birds in Basse Casamance was noted by early explorers. While Basse Casamance National Park and Kalissaye Avifaunal Reserve have not been open for years due to the Casamance Conflict, Carabane has been found to be very conducive to ornithological observation. A study in 1998 discovered the following species on the island: African darter (Anhinga rufa), Goliath heron (Ardea goliath), palm-nut vulture (Gypohierax angolensis), black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa), whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus), Eurasian curlew (Numenius arquata), Caspian tern (Sterna caspia), blue-spotted wood-dove (Turtur afer), red-eyed dove (Streptopelia semitorquata), white-rumped swift (Apus caffer), woodland kingfisher (Halcyon senegalensis), grey-backed camaroptera (Camaroptera brachyura), red-bellied paradise-flycatcher (Terpsiphone rufiventer), pied crow (Corvus albus), black-rumped waxbill (Estrilda troglodytes) and yellow-fronted canary (Serinus mozambicus). Fish are plentiful in the waters surrounding the island, where one may encounter trevallies (Carangidae), Giant African threadfins (Polydactylus quadrifilis), great barracudas (Sphyraena barracuda), or African red snappers (Lutjanus agennes). The mangroves are home to many crustaceans such as southern pink shrimp (Farfantepenaeus notialis), sand fiddler crabs (Uca pugilator), and molluscs. The shellfish population consists mostly of mangrove oysters (Crassostrea gasar), which cling to uncovered mangrove roots at low tide. The red-headed agama and monitor lizard make up the reptilian population of the island. The sandbar of Carabane has very few mammals other than pets, although the French first noted the presence of monkeys in 1835. In 1870, other settlers noted with disgust that the natives often ate monkeys and dogs. In the early 21st century, bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are commonly sighted off the island. The lack of tourism because of the civil unrest has benefited biodiversity. In this way, the nearby Basse Casamance National Park, which has been closed for years, has seen a remarkable return of Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus), Senegalese manatees (Trichechus senegalensis), and breeding birds. On an island called Ilha dos Mosquitos (Portuguese for "Mosquito Island"), the natives and their visitors continue to protect themselves with mosquito nets and Shea butter. They must also protect themselves from other, smaller insects which are no less troublesome: black flies (Simulium). ## History ### First inhabitants The traditions of the local peoples are unanimous in affirming that the oldest inhabitants of Casamance are the Bainuk people and that the left bank of the mouth of the river was first populated by the Jola. Portuguese sailors reached the west African coast in the 15th century, and in the 16th century, Portuguese traders became active in the Casamance region, mostly in search of wax, ivory, and slaves. They did not linger on "Mosquito Island", instead founding their first trading post at Ziguinchor in 1645. In the late 1820s, a mulatto trader from Gorée, Pierre Baudin, moved to Itou and began planting rice and producing lime by crushing the shells of mangrove oysters and cooking them in lime kilns. The French administration treated Baudin as their representative on the island and did not send others because few of the French wanted to live on the island. Being wet and marshy, Carabane had a reputation for its poor sanitation. The local economy was based mainly on weedy rice, which was sold in Ziguinchor or to the British in The Gambia. The Baudin family used slaves to produce the rice and, despite the declaration of its official abolition in the French colonial empire in 1848, slavery continued on the island until the early 20th century. The colonial administration wanted to expand its influence around the river, particularly because the inhabitants of Gorée were threatened with losing part of their resources with the imminent demise of the slave trade, and also because of their competition with Saint-Louis. On January 9, 1836, Lieutenant Malavois, who was in charge of Gorée, left for Casamance in search of a site for a trading post. The tip of Diogue, on the north shore, was first considered, but at the refusal of the Jola, it was the opposite bank which was eventually accepted. ### French colonization On January 22, 1836, the island was ceded to France by the village leader of Kagnout at an annual cost of 196 francs. Still, another treaty made Sédhiou the primary trading post of Casamance, and the exploitation of Carabane was left for some time in the hands of the Baudin family, first Pierre then his brother Jean. Each successively took on the title of Resident. With this official but ambiguous title, they were permitted to continue their trading operation so long as they regularly reported to France. When Jean Baudin fell into disgrace due to a serious incident involving an English ship, he was replaced as Resident in October 1849 by Emmanuel Bertrand-Bocandé. This multilingual, enterprising businessman and entomologist from Nantes transformed "his" island, sparking a resurgence of commercial and political activity. In 1852, the population surpassed 1,000 inhabitants. A cadastral map assigned tracts of 30 square metres (320 sq ft) to traders and contractors. Other tracts of 15 square metres (160 sq ft) were allotted for housing. Provisional concessions were granted to residents of Saint-Louis and Gorée. Other than settlers, the island was mainly inhabited by animist Jola farmers, whose practices were disconcerting to the settlers. Coexistence was not always easy. Christianity was practiced by the Europeans and some of the residents of Gorée, although the island did not yet have a church. Missionaries tried but were not permitted to settle on the island. The construction of a wharf 116 metres (381 ft) long allowed the berthing of larger vessels coming in from Casamance. A railed pier was built along the river in order to facilitate the transfer of goods. Carabane exported rice, but also cotton, considered to be of poor quality, which was ginned in a factory built by Bertrand-Bocandé in 1840, owned first by Maurel & Prom and then by the Casamance Company. The factory also produced almonds and crabwood (Carapa procera). Bertrand-Bocandé became involved in local African politics during his time as Resident. When an intertribal conflict led to an armed raid of Carabane, he mediated the conflict. In 1850, the island's economic growth was disturbed because of an extensive livestock raid which precipitated further incidents the following year. In response to this conflict with the former owners of Carabane, the residents of Kagnout, Bertrand-Bocandé convinced the governor of Senegal to send a warship to Carabane to frighten off the raiders. This single ship failed to faze the island's opponents, therefore Bertrand-Bocandé requested a detachment of soldiers and several other ships from the governor. When these reinforcements arrived from Gorée, the conflict was successfully ended. A treaty was signed on March 25, establishing the sovereignty of France not only in Casamance, but also in Kagnout and Samatit. For his involvement in the conflict, Bertrand-Bocandé was accepted into the Légion d'honneur and was given a land concession. Bertrand-Bocandé left the island in 1857 for a leave of absence, but he abandoned his post as Resident in 1860. His tireless activity had a lasting effect on the island. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the new French territory did not recognize the authority of the treaties imposed upon them. For this reason, rice farmers in Carabane experienced lootings and abductions by the Karoninka people. Troops led by Émile Pinet-Laprade attacked the Karoninka villages in March 1860, forcing them to submission. A period of calm ensued. While the Mandinka Muslims continued, illegally, to practice slavery and trade, non-Muslim villages tended to come together, accepting the Resident of Carabane as the arbitrator of their disagreements. In 1869, Carabane became autonomous, but it merged with Sédhiou in 1886. Its garrison of a dozen men was regularly stricken with tropical diseases such as malaria. In 1877, 527 people were counted on the island, mostly Jola, but also some Wolofs, Muslims, and a few Manjacks from Portuguese Guinea. The first Catholic mission in Sédhiou was founded in 1875 and the first baptisms were celebrated that same year in Carabane. There were 17 people baptised in total, most of whom were residents of the island. The Holy Ghost Fathers' mission in Carabane was founded in 1880 by Father Kieffer. On February 22, he settled on the island, but he served for only two years. The staff of the colonial administration was small: the manager of a customs post with four employees, a gunner, a corporal, and six European tirailleurs. There were approximately 250 Christians in Carabane, mostly mulattos. The priest built his house out of Palmyra palm trunks. He visited nearby villages and sometimes went to Sédhiou. The founding of the mission in Carabane was followed by others in Ziguinchor (1888), Elinkine (1891), and several nearby locations in the 20th century. In 1900, a Spiritan missionary, Father Wintz, wrote the first catechism in the Jola language. Temporarily transferred to Ziguinchor, the Carabane mission closed in 1888. Missionaries returned in 1890 and, although they immediately expanded the church building, it was still not large enough to accommodate all those who wished to attend. Thanks to subsidies by the bishop, Magloire-Désiré Barthet, and to donations by the parishioners, a new church was built and inaugurated on the Catholic feast day of Saint Anne in 1897. The mission also obtained two adjacent properties, lot \#73 on the cadastral map. By the following year, the Christian community had performed 1,100 baptisms, as well as many catechumen. Competition between the French and the Portuguese began to show itself in the region during this period. Because the Portuguese-operated trading posts in Cacheu and Farim asked for higher prices than the French-operated trading posts in Carabane and Sédhiou, the Portuguese lost many traders to the French. This trend led to the ceding of Ziguinchor to France, which was negotiated in Carabane in April 1888 between Commissioner Oliveira and Captain Brosselard-Faidherbe. In 1901, the administrative capital of Casamance was transferred from Carabane to Ziguinchor, a status which was transferred in turn to Oussouye two years later. By 1904, Carabane had lost several of its amenities, including its customs services, which were centralized. The island's trading houses were abandoned and the number of Christians dwindled from 1,000 to 300 by 1907. Despite the anti-clerical movement's growth in France at the time, education in Carabane continued to be administered by the Holy Ghost Fathers for the boys and by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny for the girls. A chapel also continued to be run on the island. In 1913, just before the outbreak of World War I, Carabane suffered a fire which caused its business to decline. People gradually left the island in search of work in Ziguinchor and even Dakar. In December 1915, Marcel de Coppet, administrator of Ziguinchor, visited the island in order to recruit tirailleurs. Six inhabitants of the island accepted the position: a Christian, a pagan, and four Muslims. In the aftermath of the Great War, the Roman Catholic Church encountered great difficulties in the region. There was insufficient staffing, the cost of living was rising, and the harsh climate began to wear on the buildings. In 1920, the diocese had, in addition to Carabane, thirteen churches and approximately thirty-five chapels. The thirteen churches were located in Dakar, Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque, Thiès, Ngazobil, Joal, Fadiouth, Foundiougne, Kaolack, Ziguinchor, Bignona and Banjul. In 1922, the Governor decreed which buildings were authorized to practise Catholicism. While the Carabane church was one of the buildings selected, some members blamed the colonial administration for having facilitated the expansion of Islam in the country. In taking leadership of the diocese, Archbishop Le Hunsec noted that the island of Carabane, heavily populated when trading was concentrated there, had lost its influence and now had fewer than 500 inhabitants. He considered transferring the mission to Oussouye, which became a reality in 1927. Starting in 1937, the mission in Oussouye also performed baptisms and funerals in Carabane. In the same year, a reform school was created on the island, operating until 1953, when it was replaced by another in Nianing. A report submitted in 1938 by an educational advisor to Marcel de Coppet, Governor General of French West Africa, detailed the daily life of the prisoners in the school which housed up to 22 boys, mostly convicted for theft but also occasionally for murder. ### Recent history Carabane's population continued to decline gradually after World War II. In 1950, the construction of a seminary was planned in Carabane, but it was transferred to a new building in Nyassia in 1959. The Carabane mission closed its doors during the wet season of 1953, 83 years after its inception. The nuns and their interns moved to Ziguinchor. Senegal's independence was declared on August 20, 1960, and after the dissolution of the short-lived Mali Federation, Casamance saw the arrival of officials coming from the north. Although many of them were Wolofs and Muslims, they did not know the Jola country and its traditions. The periods of drought that ravaged the Sahel in the 1970s forced peanut farmers to move to regions where rice was all that grew. Discontent began to spread among the people, which sometimes escalated to violence. Casamance has since experienced years of conflict which put local initiatives in jeopardy, such as nature reserves and the first network of villages. In 1998, in the middle of the conflict, the French commune of Bon-Encontre committed to providing Carabane with humanitarian aid, both economically and culturally. Carabane has remained one of the calmest areas of Casamance throughout the conflict. Nonetheless, a few small incidents were reported around April 2000. The rebels may have wanted to take advantage of Carabane's reputation to attract media attention. The ceasefire of 2004 brought relative peace, but in the meantime, the sinking of the Joola in 2002 claimed the lives of many inhabitants of Carabane and curtailed much of its ability to engage in trade and accept tourists for several years. Considering the problems brought on by the conflict along with the threat of coastal erosion on the island, some fear the worst. Thus, after years of development and community outreach, Carabane is experiencing difficulties in a number of ways. ## Society ### Administration Formerly an administrative district in its own right, even a regional capital, Carabane is now just one of 23 villages in the rural community of Diembéring, of which Kabrousse, Cap Skirring, and Boucott-Diembéring are the largest centres. This rural community is located in the Kabrousse Arrondissement. It is part of Oussouye Department, the smallest and least central of the three departments in Ziguinchor Region. In a country which includes some 13,000 villages, the village is considered, by a 1972 decree, the elementary entity in the administrative body of the nation. Each is administered by a leader, assisted by a council. After consultation, the nomination of a leader is established by the prefect and approved by the Minister of the Interior. Under Senegalese law, the leader of the village has certain prerogatives, including law enforcement, tax collection, and keeping of vital records in the village. While this administrative structure was decreed by a government anxious to deal with interlocutors, such a restructuring has not taken place in Casamance. Jola society is devoid of any formal hierarchy. It has no leader with genuine permanent authority. Instead, there are village elders who meet when important decisions need to be made. According to Italian anthropologist Paolo Palmeri, the leader of the village has very little power in reality, as he is merely responsible for relations with the national administration. He simply allows the village to continue practicing its traditions. In a society where politics are inextricably linked to religion, the real holders of power are the fetish priests. The very notion of a village is almost inappropriate in this context: it might be more appropriately considered a clan or an aggregation of kinship. Other specialists, such as Christian Sina Diatta, compare Jola communities to those of mound-building termites, in which each member performs a specific function and where the queen is easily replaceable. ### Population In 2003, the village of Carabane's official population count stood at 396 people and 55 households, but it fluctuates with the seasons and sometimes reaches some 1,750 people, according to local sources. Most of the population is Jola. The Jola are very distinct from other major ethnic groups in Senegal by their language, egalitarian society, freedom from political hierarchy, and lack of slavery. Their traditions have persevered because of their independent spirit as well as their geographical isolation. This ethnic group accounts for 80 to 90% of the residents of Basse Casamance, but only 6 to 8% of the total population of Senegal. They are the largest ethnic group in Carabane, followed by Wolofs, Lebous, and Serers (including Niominka fishermen). Manjacks also live on the island, some of whom came from Saint-Louis and Gorée at the time of the first colonization. Two communities from neighbouring countries, one from Guinea (the Susu people) and the other from Guinea-Bissau, have settled on the other side of the island at a distance from the village. There are also seasonal workers who come to fish: Ghanaians, Guineans, and Gambians. The indigenous population was originally animist, but while the fetishes and sacred groves dedicated to initiation rites such as boukout survive as cultural icons of Casamance, the monotheistic belief systems of Catholicism and Islam have become the most widely held in Carabane. The 1988 census reported that Muslims account for 94% of the population of Senegal, but only 26.5% of the population of Oussouye Department, where Carabane is located. Still, this department is largely rural, while Carabane has historically supported great ethnic diversity. Islam has not been practiced by Wolof and Serer fishermen since the 19th century, but the colonial administration brought with it many translators, guides, and secretaries from Dakar, many of whom were Muslim. ### Education and health Founded in 1892, the Carabane school was one of the first in the region. It began as an all-boys school, but in 1898, three nuns belonging to the indigenous congregation of the Daughters of the Holy Heart of Mary began teaching classes for girls. Soon, there were 60 students. A school infrastructure description in the region in 1900 reveals that the boys' school in Carabane was open from December to August each year, and that holidays ran from September to November, when parents needed their children in the fields to help cultivate rice. In 1903, when Carabane lost its status as capital, the school was instructing 63 boys and 102 girls. In 1914, it had only 56 boys and 26 girls, a situation similar to that in Bignona. Carabane has a new primary school, École François Mendy, inaugurated on January 21, 2006, hosting six classes. The literacy rate is approximately 90%. Students may continue their studies at the middle school in Elinkine, the Aline Sitoe Diatta High School in Oussouye, and then a university in either Dakar or Ziguinchor. Carabane's kindergarten is located in a community house, called "House of Women and Children", founded in 1988 under the auspices of Caritas Ziguinchor. In 1895, the government established a medical post in Carabane, but it closed the following year. In 1898, the Daughters of the Holy Heart of Mary opened a clinic at the same time as the girls' school. As of 2010, the village has a health facility which is connected to that of Oussouye and Ziguinchor. It provides vaccinations, family planning consultations, and prenatal information. A maternity hospital was founded in 1991 which is decorated with a fresco by Malang Badji, one of the most famous artists in the region. The Ph.D. thesis published in 2003, La part de l'autre: une aventure humaine en terre Diola, meaning "Part of the Other: A Human Adventure in Jola Territory", describes the health challenge present on the island in a more general context. In particular, the location of the island does not allow easy access to serious or urgent medical assistance. There is a pirogue-ambulance for the transportation of people off the island in the case of medical emergencies. ## Economy The testimonies of explorers and colonial administrators demonstrate that Carabane has participated in rice cultivation, fishery, trade, and palm wine production for centuries. The island experienced a decline in the 20th century, when Ziguinchor emerged as the regional capital, and more recently because of the negative economic consequences resulting from the Casamance Conflict and the Joola tragedy. ### Transportation and energy From the colonizers' perspective, Carabane's position at the mouth of the river was an undeniable asset. In the 20th and 21st centuries, in terms of trade and tourism issues, this location is more of a disadvantage because it effectively separates the island from the rest of the country. While a direct route by sea has not been available since the sinking of the Joola, the traveller from Dakar may use various other means of transportation in order to arrive in Basse Casamance. Some national roads connect to Ziguinchor, down the N1 to Kaolack. The N4 and N5 roads cross the Gambia (both the country and the river), the former running through Nioro du Rip to Farafenni, and the latter crossing the river to Banjul. The two roads merge in Bignona before descending to Ziguinchor. However, traffic is forbidden on both roads between 7 p.m. and 10 a.m., and the routes are subject to frequent accidents and constant demining operations. Alternatively, it is possible to travel by plane to the airport in Ziguinchor or Cap Skirring, or to travel by boat to one of these locations. Reaching Carabane from either town is relatively straightforward. By boat, the distance between Dakar and Carabane is 265 kilometres (143 nmi), although Ziguinchor is only 48 kilometres (30 mi) away. Before the launch of the Joola, other boats, mostly well-worn ones, made the connection: first Cap Skirring, then the Casamance Express, and then Island Karabane. In January 1991, a brand new ferry went into operation. Like its predecessors, it connected Dakar to Ziguinchor, stopping near Carabane where canoes could reach the island. On September 26, 2002, 180 extra passengers boarded the already overloaded ship at this stop, and a few hours later, the Joola sank. For security reasons, the Joola'''s successor, the Wilis, stopped calling at Carabane, to the great displeasure of the inhabitants. Tourists became rare after that, and from time to time, inhabitants of the island found it necessary to move to Dakar or Ziguinchor. Significant modifications to the MV Aline Sitoe Diatta, which replaced the Wilis in March 2008, were considered to allow it to stop safely at the island, and the construction of a berth was announced. Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, who later became Prime Minister of Senegal, laid the first stone of the berth in July 2008, and the entire construction project was financed by the Senegalese government at an estimated cost of 12 billion West African CFA francs. On April 26, 2014, the MV Aline Sitoe Diatta stopped at the Carabane berth for the first time, improving transportation for locals and tourists. As of 2015, the ferry stops at Carabane four times each week in the middle of its trips between Dakar and Ziguinchor. ### Agriculture and aquaculture #### Rice cultivation In Basse Casamance, the rice cycle structures the lives of the population and plays a central economic and religious role. The Jola, who constitute 80 to 90% of the population of Basse Casamance, practice a unique form of rice cultivation. Descriptions of the techniques used in the late 15th century, recorded by the first Portuguese explorers, show them to be similar to those still in use, particularly with respect to flooding and transplanting. Only the varieties of rice have changed, from African rice to Asian rice, a separate species. The basic tool used is the kayendo, a kind of wooden spade or shovel ranging from 40 to 70 centimetres (16 to 28 in), surrounded by a sharp wrought iron blade and attached to a very long, straight, cylindrical neck. The two parts are connected by strips of torn Palmyra palm leaves. The main part is manufactured from a very hard wood measuring 2 to 2.5 metres (6 ft 7 in to 8 ft 2 in) in length. The kayendo is mainly used to plough rice fields, but is also used for other purposes, such as excavation and construction. Men perform the clearing and ploughing while the women take care of the sowing, replanting, and weeding as well as the harvesting between October and January. An even checkerboard plot model dominates the green landscape during the rainy season, which becomes more austere after harvest. The rice fields differ only in terms of soil type and location. Where mangroves are populous, such as in Carabane, the rice paddy fields between them must be protected from the channels of saltwater which overflow during high tide. Rice farmers must therefore build levees, dig ditches, and create ponds. The fish and shrimp which subsequently become trapped are harvested at the end of the rainy season, when the basins are emptied. The plots of land which were safeguarded from flooding are then cleared and ploughed. Several years of drainage are required to desalinate the soil. Although practised in Basse Casamance for centuries, rice cultivation has been threatened since the late 1960s. Productivity has declined because many workers have opted for life in the city, even though they continue to support their community. The drought of the 1970s and 1980s further aggravated the situation. #### Palm oil and palm wine Among the agricultural activities practised during the dry season, which halts work in the rice fields, the most traditional are those related to the exploitation of African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), which provides two products which are very popular in the region: palm oil and palm wine. Palm oil is an essential ingredient in local cuisine. As a carefully preserved condiment, it is combined with plain rice on holidays. The oil comes from the fruit clusters which are picked by men and then deseeded, allowed to dry, crushed in a mortar, and boiled by women. Palm wine (called bunuk or bounouk in the Jola language) is an alcoholic drink derived from the natural fermentation of palm sap, so is not strictly a wine, which is produced by the fermentation of grapes. The recent partial Islamization of the region has not challenged its consumption. Fruit clusters are collected exclusively by the men. Supported by a strap, the harvester climbs the tree, cuts the bud, and holds out a funnel which allows the resulting fluid to flow drip by drip into an elongated calabash or, more recently, a bottle. The alcohol content of palm wine develops throughout the day. The locals consume large quantities on a daily basis, and even more at banquets and ceremonies dedicated to fetishes. Palm wine is often traded for rice or sold in the city. Many Jola proverbs attest the popularity of the drink, such as Bunuk abajut birto, which means "With palm wine, one never stands up", or Ulako, kumusaet jígabulaju, which means "Sit down, don't spill the palm wine". #### Aquaculture The island's proximity to the river and the ocean suggests that the area is suited to fishing and related activities, yet the indigenous people, mostly land-dwellers, have long been content to practise artisan fishing, just to supply their own daily needs. Pirogues cut from the trunks of kapok trees are most often used, along with traps, nets, baskets, and fences. In the early 20th century, experienced fishermen from other parts of Senegal, along with others from Mali, Guinea, and Ghana, developed deep-sea fishing on the island and introduced new equipment. The collection of shellfish, especially oysters, is another traditional activity which still takes place in Casamance, which is one of three oyster-producing regions in Senegal, along with Petite Côte and Sine-Saloum. Oysters collect on the roots of mangrove trees which are uncovered at low tide. They are harvested during the dry season, mainly by women, who control, from harvest to distribution, an activity that requires little investment and provides them with some financial independence. Oysters are an important component of the family diet. Rich in dietary minerals and vitamin C, they are the second largest source of animal protein among the Jola people after fish, followed by chicken, and pork. Oysters are readily associated with rice, the staple food, and in times of shortage, even replace it. Locally, oysters are boiled or grilled on a wood fire and consumed with a spicy sauce. Those destined for sale or preservation, however, are sun-dried or smoked. In some villages, including Carabane, they are kept alive for several weeks before being transported to market. Oysters are also a source of income, and Carabane is located in the center of the collection zone, which is one of the reasons why boats formerly called at the island. Oysters were once easily transported from Carabane to Dakar, where they were either sold by the pickers themselves or by hawkers. Crustaceans, such as sand fiddler crabs and shrimp, among the mangroves also occupy a significant place in the local economy. While a large number of shrimp species inhabit the Senegambian area, a single family exists in Casamance: Penaeidae. Southern pink shrimp (Farfantepenaeus notialis) are the most commonly collected. They were traditionally caught as part of local artisan fishing by men, women, and children. Shrimp collection in the area experienced significant development in the 1960s, following the establishment of European industrial units. The local fishermen switched to this method, and there was an increased presence of fishermen from other areas. A study in 2005 revealed the extent to which the shrimp population in the region has been depleted, citing multiple causes, including diminishing rainfall, over-salinization of the estuary, and poorly controlled harvesting. Along with the mangrove degradation, the civil unrest, and the inadequate fishery regulation, Casamance has had to deal with the closure in 2003 of a major industrial complex in Ziguinchor which treated and exported shrimp and other crustaceans and employed more than 2,000 people. Grouped into cooperatives, women play a leading role in the island's economy. Notably through microcredit, they engage in fishing-related activities, such as smoking fish and processing shrimp, oysters, and shellfish in general. As there is no industrial activity on the island (the closest such activity is in Ziguinchor), the island is experiencing a rural exodus of young people. They return to help their parents in the rice fields and participate in religious ceremonies during the dry season, but they tend to settle off the island permanently. ### Tourism The Republic of Senegal placed an emphasis on tourism early in its history. The results were promising, and developing the industry further became a priority in the country's 4th Economic and Social Plan (1973–1977). Casamance subsequently became the main tourist destination in the country. Already having been described in the 19th century by Captain Brosselard-Faidherbe as a kind of Brazil in Africa, Carabane seemed well-placed to attract visitors in search of exoticism as well as vacationers seeking sandy beaches and kite surfing. At the same time, national and even international controversy threatened the industry from the beginning. Those who opposed tourism in Senegal described it as a new form of colonialism while supporters saw it as a panacea that would cure the country of underdevelopment. The idea of alternative tourism was discussed. Several towns in Basse Casamance, including Carabane, were selected to test an integrated agritourism managed by the villagers themselves. In the early 1970s, the agritourism promoter Christian Saglio, a young French sociologist who later became the director of the Leopold Sedar Senghor French Institute in Dakar, believed in Carabane's potential. He stated that he wanted to make the island the "Gorée of Casamance", using it as a hub for other camps. Saglio suggested the restoration of old buildings and canopy beds. Despite his fervour, Saglio's negotiations with the local people were unsuccessful. Niomoune and Carabane were the first two villages to attempt to apply this innovative approach, but both failed. The inhabitants were reluctant to participate, and the young inexperienced promoter had to abandon some of his ethnographic theories in favour of being careful to understand the daily realities of villages. The project was eventually abandoned, and the Catholic missions house was transformed by the nuns themselves into a modern, functional building. Despite the failure of Saglio's initiative in Carabane, agritourist camps were set up over the following decade in a dozen other nearby towns. While Carabane's tourism sector has suffered because it has not taken part in the network of villages, tourists have avoided travelling to Casamance in general because of the civil unrest. The signing of a ceasefire in 2004 allowed tourism to resume, but not to the extent it had reached before the conflict. Tour operators continue to advertise the island as a lost paradise surrounded by mangroves where travellers' exotic dreams come to life, but this type of discovery tourism is not as popular as traditional beach-related tourism. Thus, visitors from France, Spain, and Italy often combine tours of the cases á impluvium in Enampore or Mlomp with a few days of relaxation in Carabane. The area is also very conducive to the interests of fishing enthusiasts. Along the beach, small stalls offer traditional crafts and clothes at prices lower than those in Cap Skirring or Saly. Badji Malang, a local painter, potter, sculptor, and poet, has created a camp in the area. Although remaining separate from the local tourism network, Carabane has demonstrated its support for social solidarity and holism by joining GENSEN (Global Ecovillage Network Senegal), a network of Senegalese ecovillages. ### Historic sites Carabane has many historic sites, such as the Catholic mission house built in 1880 which has since been turned into a hotel, a Brittany-style church building which is no longer in use, and a former slave-trade building. There is also a French cemetery where a Troupes de marine-Captain with the name Aristide Protet was shot with a poisoned arrow and buried standing up in front of the sea, according to his last wishes. Some tour guides falsely claim that this was Auguste Léopold Protet, the founder of the city of Dakar, but the name Aristide Protet is clearly shown on the tomb's plaque. Near the beach are ruins of buildings, pontoons, and wells, with a large tree in the center. A huge piece of metal in its midst bears the inscription CEO Forrester & Co. Vauxhall Foundry. 18 Liverpool S3''. Carabane was added to the list of historic sites and monuments of Senegal in 2003. An application for Carabane to become a World Heritage Site was filed with UNESCO on November 18, 2005. Inspired by Gorée's example, Carabane is attempting to pay homage to victims of slavery by starting a small museum like the House of Slaves. Like Gorée and Saint-Louis, Carabane places great importance on its cultural heritage. The architectural reminders of this heritage require significant restoration as they have experienced considerable degradation. In 1964, French anthropologist Louis-Vincent Thomas posed the question of whether Carabane should be preserved, and this question continues to be relevant. The local people suggest that the entire Diogue–Nikine–Carabane area needs saving. ## See also - Geography of Senegal - History of Senegal - List of islands of Senegal

Nestor Lakoba

Abkhazian communist leader

Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba (1 May 1893 – 28 December 1936) was an Abkhaz communist leader. Lakoba helped establish Bolshevik power in Abkhazia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and served as the head of Abkhazia after its conquest by the Bolshevik Red Army in 1921. While in power, Lakoba saw that Abkhazia was initially given autonomy within the USSR as the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia. Though nominally a part of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic with a special status of "union republic," the Abkhaz SSR was effectively a separate republic, made possible by Lakoba's close relationship with Joseph Stalin. Lakoba successfully opposed the extension of collectivization of Abkhazia, though in return Lakoba was forced to accept a downgrade of Abkhazia's status to that of an autonomous republic within the Georgian SSR. Popular in Abkhazia due to his ability to resonate with the people, Lakoba maintained a close relationship with Stalin, who would frequently holiday in Abkhazia during the 1920s and 1930s. This relationship saw Lakoba become the rival of one of Stalin's other confidants, Lavrentiy Beria, who was in charge of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, which included Georgia. During a visit to Beria in Tbilisi in December 1936, Lakoba was poisoned, allowing Beria to consolidate his control over Abkhazia and all of Georgia and to discredit Lakoba and his family as enemies of the state. Rehabilitated after the death of Stalin in 1953, Lakoba is now revered as a national hero in Abkhazia. ## Early life ### Youth and education Nestor Lakoba was born in the village of Lykhny, in what was then the Sukhum Okrug of the Kutais Governorate in the Russian Empire (now Abkhazia) to a peasant family. He had two brothers, Vasily and Mikhail. His father Apollo died three months before his birth; Mikhail Bgazhba, who would serve as the First Secretary of Abkhazia, wrote that Apollo Lakoba was shot for opposing the nobles and landowners in the region. Lakoba's mother remarried twice, but both husbands died while Lakoba was young. From ages 10 to 12 Lakoba attended a parish school in New Athos, followed by a further two years of schooling in Lykhny. He entered the Tiflis Seminary in 1905, but he was not interested in its religious syllabus. He read banned books and was frequently caught doing so by the school authorities. Physically unimpressive, he was nearly totally deaf, and used hearing aids throughout his life, though Leon Trotsky recalled it was still difficult to communicate with Lakoba. This became a well-known feature of Lakoba, and he would be jokingly referred to as Adagua (the "Deaf One") by Joseph Stalin. In 1911 he was expelled from the seminary for revolutionary activity and moved to Batumi, then a major port for exporting oil from the Caucasus, where he taught privately and studied for the gymnasium exam. It was in Batum that Lakoba first became acquainted with the Bolsheviks, working with them from the autumn of 1911 and officially joining them in September 1912. He became involved with disseminating propaganda amongst the workers and peasants in the city and throughout Adjara, the local region, and began to refine his ability to relate to the masses. Discovered by the police, he was forced to leave Batum in 1914, so moved to Grozny, another major oil-based city in the Caucasus, and continued his efforts to spread Bolshevik propaganda among the people. Lakoba continued studying in Grozny, passing his examinations in 1915, and the following year enrolled in law at Kharkov University in what is now Ukraine, but the onset of the First World War and its subsequent effect on Abkhazia led him to quit his studies and return home after only a short time. ### Early Bolshevik activities Back in Abkhazia, Lakoba took up a position in the Gudauta region helping to build a railway to Russia, while continuing to spread Bolshevik propaganda to the workers. The 1917 February Revolution, which ended the Russian Empire, resulted in the status of Abkhazia becoming contested and unclear. A peasant assembly was created to govern the region, and Lakoba was elected as a representative of Gudauta. Bgazhba wrote that his ability to mingle with the people of the region combined with his speaking abilities made him an ideal choice as representative. Lakoba's reputation was enhanced throughout Abkhazia by helping to establish "Kiaraz" ("Киараз"; "mutual support" in Abkhaz), a peasant brigade that would later help consolidate Bolshevik control. Lakoba was the leading Bolshevik in Abkhazia when the Revolution began in 1917. Based in Gudauta in the north of Abkhazia, the Bolsheviks opposed the Mensheviks, who were centered on Sukhumi. On 16 February 1918 Lakoba and Efrem Eshba, an Abkhaz Bolshevik, overthrew the Abkhaz People's Council (APC), which had provisionally controlled Abkhazia since November 1917. Aided by Russian sailors from warships docked at Sukhumi, the coup only lasted five days as the warships departed, removing the main support for the Bolsheviks, and the APC was able to regain control. Lakoba joined Eshba in April, overthrowing the APC once again. They held power for forty-two days, before Georgian Democratic Republican forces and Abkhaz anti-Bolsheviks regained control over Abkhazia, which they regarded as an integral part of Georgia. Both Lakoba and Eshba fled to Russia, and remained there until 1921. The APC retained control of Abkhazia, and negotiated with the Georgian government for a final status of Abkhazia; ultimately a resolution was not found before the Bolsheviks invaded in 1921. In the autumn of 1918, Lakoba was ordered to return to Abkhazia, in order to attack the Mensheviks from their rear positions. He was captured by the Mensheviks during this time and imprisoned in Sukhumi, but released early in 1919 due to public opposition. That April he was offered the post of police commissioner of the Ochamchira District, which he accepted and used as a means to spread Bolshevik propaganda. When the Menshevik-backed central authorities became aware of this, Lakoba again left Abkhazia, staying in Batumi for a few months. While there he was elected the deputy chairman of the Sukhumi district party committee. Lakoba also led several operations near Batumi that hindered the ability of the White movement (opponents of the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War) in the Caucasus, further improving his image amongst the Bolshevik leadership. In 1921 Lakoba married Sariya Dzhikh-Ogly. Born to a wealthy family in Batumi, her father was ethnically Adjaran while her mother was Abkhazian and originally from Ochamchire. They had met a couple years before when Lakoba was hiding from the British occupation forces. The following year they had their only child, a son named Rauf. The family was close, with Lakoba helping his wife get an education, and providing the same to Rauf as well. Sariya came to be regarded as an excellent hostess, and her sister-in-law Adile Abbas-Ogly wrote that she was well known in Moscow for this, and a key reason Stalin would take vacations in Abkhazia. ## Leader of Abkhazia ### Establishment as leader Lakoba returned to Abkhazia in 1921, after it had been occupied by Bolshevik Russia, as part of its conquest of Georgia. Along with Eshba and Nikolai Akirtava, Lakoba was one of the signatories on a telegram to Vladimir Lenin announcing the formation of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Abkhazia (SSR Abkhazia) which was initially allowed to exist as a full union republic. A Revolutionary Committee (Revkom), formed and led by Eshba and Lakoba in preparation for the Bolshevik occupation, took control of Abkhazia. The Revkom resigned on 17 February 1922, and Lakoba was unanimously elected the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, a body that was formed that day, thus effectively the head of Abkhazia. He would hold this post until 17 April 1930, when the council was abolished and replaced by a Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, though Lakoba would retain the top position. Though held in high regard by his fellow revolutionaries, Lakoba never held a significant role within the Communist Party and refused to attend any meetings, as the Abkhaz Party was simply a branch of the Georgian Party, instead using his patronage network to establish himself. ### Lakoba in power Uncontested as the leader of Abkhazia, Lakoba had such control that it was jokingly referred to as 'Lakobistan'. Long a friend of several leading Bolsheviks, including Sergo Orjonikidze, Sergei Kirov, and Lev Kamenev, it was his relationship with Stalin that was most important to Lakoba's rise to power. Stalin was fond of Lakoba as they had much in common with each other: both were from the Caucasus, both grew up fatherless (Stalin's father had moved away for work when Stalin was young), and they both attended the same seminary school. Stalin admired Lakoba's marksmanship, as well as his work during the Civil War. Familiar with Abkhazia from his revolutionary days, Stalin had a dacha built in the region and vacationed there throughout the 1920s. He would joke, "I am Koba, and you are Lakoba" ("Я Коба, а ты Лакоба" in Russian; Koba was one of Stalin's pseudonyms as a revolutionary). It was the role that Lakoba played in Stalin's own rise to power that cemented his status as Stalin's close confidant. When Lenin died in January 1924, Leon Trotsky, who was Stalin's only serious rival for the leadership, was in Sukhumi for health reasons. Lakoba ensured that Trotsky was isolated during the immediate aftermath of Lenin's death and funeral, an act which helped Stalin to consolidate his own power. Though the two possibly met during the Civil War, Lakoba and Stalin became properly acquainted at the Thirteenth Party Congress in Moscow, held in May 1924. Lakoba used his relationship with Stalin to benefit both himself and Abkhazia. Aware that the Abkhaz would be marginalized within the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (Georgian SSR), he sought to keep Abkhazia as a full union republic. He ultimately had to concede to Abkhazia's status of "treaty republic" within Georgia, a status that was never fully clarified. Abkhazia, as a part of the Georgian SSR, then joined the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (a union of the Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijanian SSRs) when it was founded in 1922. Lakoba generally avoided going through Party channels, which would have meant dealing with reluctant officials in Georgia's capital Tbilisi, and instead used his connections to go directly to Moscow. He oversaw the implementation of korenizatsiya, a policy introduced across the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s that was meant to benefit ethnic minorities, though most of the ethnic Abkhaz promoted were Lakoba's close confidants. In recognition of his leadership, on 15 March 1935 Lakoba and Abkhazia were both awarded the Order of Lenin, though the ceremony was pushed back until the next year in order to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Bolsheviks in Abkhazia. In December 1935, whilst in Moscow, Lakoba was given the Order of the Red Banner in recognition of his efforts during the Civil War. As a leader, Lakoba proved to be very popular with the populace, which contrasted with other ethnic minority leaders across the Soviet Union, who were usually mistrusted by the locals and regarded as representatives of the state. He visited the villages of Abkhazia, and as Bgazhba wrote, "Lakoba wanted to be familiar with the living conditions of the peasants". In contrast to other Bolshevik leaders, Lakoba was quiet and elegant and avoided shouting to make his point. He was especially known for his accessibility to the people: a 1924 report by the journalist Zinaida Rikhter said that: > "In Sukhum, only in the reception room of the presidium can we but get an idea of the peasant identity of Abkhazia. To Nestor, as the peasants simply call him one on one, they come with any little thing, bypassing all official channels, in certainty that he will hear them out and make a decision. The head of Abkhazia, Comrade Lakoba, is loved by the peasants and by the entire population." ### Development of Abkhazia A proponent of developing Abkhazia, Lakoba oversaw massive industrialization policies like the establishment of a coal mining operation near the town of Tkvarcheli, though they did not have a large impact on the overall economic strength of the region. Other projects included building new roads and railways, the drainage of wetlands as a preventive measure against malaria, and increased forestry. Agriculture was also given prominence, particularly tobacco: by the 1930s Abkhazia supplied up to 52 percent of all tobacco exports from the USSR. Other agricultural products, including tea, wine, and citrus fruits—especially tangerines—were produced in large quantities, making Abkhazia one of the most prosperous regions in the entire Soviet Union, and considerably richer than Georgia. The export of these products turned the region into "an island of prosperity in a war-ravaged Caucasus". Education was also a major issue for Lakoba, who oversaw the construction of many new schools throughout Abkhazia: aided by the korenizatsiia policies that promoted local ethnic groups, many schools teaching in Abkhaz were opened in the 1920s, as well as schools in Georgian, Armenian, and Greek. Lakoba was determined to maintain ethnic harmony in Abkhazia, a demographically diverse region. The ethnic Abkhaz only constituted roughly 25–30% of the population during the 1920s and 1930s, which included significant numbers of Georgians, Russians, Armenians, and Greeks. Lakoba kept peace in Abkhazia by ignoring Marxian class theory and protecting former landowners and nobles. This led to a 1929 report that called for him to be removed from power. Stalin prevented this, but criticized Lakoba for his mistake of "seeking support in all layers of the population" (which was contrary to Bolshevik policy). The implementation of collectivization across the Soviet Union, which began in 1928, proved to be a major issue for both Abkhazia and Lakoba. Traditional Abkhaz agricultural practice had seen farming conducted by individual households, though assistance from other families and friends was frequent. The historian Timothy Blauvelt has written that Lakoba tried to defer collectivization for the first two years by using a variety of excuses, such as "local conditions", "backwardness" of local agricultural methods, "primitive technology" and the lack of kulaks in Abkhazia, although Blauvelt believes that it was Lakoba's relationship with Stalin together with the remote location of Abkhazia that delayed collectivization. Lakoba's refusal to introduce the policy led to further disputes between him and the Abkhaz Party, which was stopped by Stalin, who rebuked the Party for "not taking into consideration the specific particularities of the Abkhazian situation, imposing sometimes the policy of mechanically transferring Russian forms of socialist construction onto Abkhazian soil". By January 1931 the Party had forced the issue, sending activists across Abkhazia to coerce peasants into collectives. There were large-scale protests in January and February against the changes. Lakoba proved unable to fully stop collectivization, though he was able to reduce the severity of some of the most extreme measures, and stop mass deportations. The Abkhaz historian Stanislav Lakoba has argued that once Stalin had firm control in Moscow he was no longer interested in leniency towards Lakoba or Abkhazia: in exchange for the relaxed introduction of collectivization, Lakoba had to acquiesce to Abkhazia losing its status as a "treaty republic." On 19 February 1931, Abkhazia was downgraded into an Autonomous Republic, the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and so was placed more firmly under Georgian control. The move was unpopular in Abkhazia and saw large-scale public protests, the first in Abkhazia against the Soviet authorities. ### Rivalry with Beria Lakoba was also influential in the rise of Lavrentiy Beria. It was on Lakoba's suggestion that Stalin first met Beria, an ethnic Mingrelian who was born and raised in Abkhazia. Beria had served as the head of the Georgian secret police since 1926, and in November 1931 with Lakoba's support he was named the Second Secretary of Transcaucasia, as well as First Secretary of Georgia, and was promoted to First Secretary of Transcaucasia in October 1932. Lakoba supported Beria's rise because he felt that as a young native of Abkhazia, Beria would be obedient to Lakoba, whereas previous officials had not been. That Beria lacked any direct access to Stalin was also important, as it meant Lakoba could maintain his individually strong relationship with Stalin. Blauvelt has suggested that Lakoba wanted Beria in power to help quash accusations dating back to 1929 that maintained he was abusing his power: a report presented to the Central Committee in 1930 exonerated Lakoba, due in the main to a lack of evidence and the intercession by Stalin. Beria's role as head of the Georgian secret police allowed him to heavily influence any future investigations. Once in this position, Beria began to undermine Lakoba and to gain closer access to Stalin. Lakoba, who grew to despise Beria, sought to discredit him. At one point Lakoba told fellow Bolshevik Sergo Ordzhonikidze that Beria once said that Ordzhonikidze "would have shot all the Georgians in Georgia if it was not for [Beria]" when he led the invasion of Georgia in 1921, and discussed the rumour that Beria had worked as a double agent against the Bolsheviks in Azerbaijan in 1920. Historian Amy Knight suggests that another source of tension might have been the longstanding animosity between Mingrelians and Abkhazians. During the Second Five-Year Plan, which began in 1933, Beria had tried to initiate the settlement of large numbers of Mingrelians into Abkhazia, though it was ultimately blocked. The relationship between Beria and Lakoba deteriorated as each tried to become closer to Stalin, and Lakoba retained his close relationship. In 1933, Beria apparently staged an event to try and win the support of Stalin, who was staying at his dacha in Gagra, in the north of Abkhazia. On 23 September, Stalin went for a short boat ride on the Black Sea, which his dacha overlooked, using the Red Star, a small boat which was not equipped for the open waters. Stalin, Beria, Klim Voroshilov and a few other passengers intended to go along the shore for a few hours. As they approached their destination for a picnic, near the town of Pitsunda, three rifle shots landed in the water near the boat, coming from either the lighthouse or a border post. None of the shots were close, though Beria later recounted that he covered Stalin's body with his own. Initially Stalin joked about the incident, though he later sent someone to investigate, and received a letter from the border guard who apparently took the shots, asking for forgiveness and explaining he thought it was a foreign vessel. Beria's own investigation blamed Lakoba for the policy to shoot at unknown ships, but the matter was dropped on the orders of Beria's superiors when rumours began to spread that the entire incident was staged to frame Lakoba. Another source of contention between Beria and Lakoba concerned the publication in 1934 of Stalin and Khashim (Сталин и Хашим in Russian). The book chronicled a period of Stalin's life as a revolutionary, when in 1901–1902 he hid with a villager named Khashim Smyrba near Batumi. This showed Stalin as someone who was close to the people, something that Stalin enjoyed hearing. Ostensibly written by Lakoba, the book was praised by Stalin, who enjoyed the description of Khashim as "simple, naïve, but honest and devoted." In response, Beria began a project to chronicle Stalin's entire time as a revolutionary in the Caucasus. The finished work, On the Question of the History of the Bolshevik Organizations in the Transcaucasus (К вопросу об истории большевистских организаций в Закавказье) falsely enhanced and aggrandized Stalin's role in the region. When it was serialised in Pravda, Beria became well known across the entire Soviet Union. Beginning in 1935, Stalin made overtures to Lakoba to move to Moscow and replace Genrikh Yagoda as the head of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Lakoba turned down the offer in December 1935, content to stay in Abkhazia. This outright refusal of such an offer only led to trouble for Lakoba, as it caused Stalin's goodwill to begin to dissipate. After Stalin repeated his offer in August 1936, only to be turned down again, a new law was implemented, "On the Correct Typeface Names of Settlements". This forced toponyms across Abkhazia to change from Abkhaz or Russian language spelling rules to Georgian rules. The capital of Abkhazia, known in Russian as Sukhum, now officially became Sukhumi. Lakoba, who had refused to issue license plates in Abkhazia until they switched the location from "Georgia" to "Abkhazia," recognized that this was a deliberate move by Beria and Stalin to undermine him, and took caution. He began to lobby Stalin to transfer Abkhazia from Georgia into the nearby Krasnodar Krai within Russia, but was rebuffed each time. On Lakoba's final visit to Moscow and Stalin, he brought the topic up one final time, and complained about Beria. ## Death As Lakoba was popular in Abkhazia and well-liked by Stalin, it was difficult for Beria to have him removed. Instead, on 26 December 1936 Beria summoned Lakoba to the Party headquarters in Tbilisi, ostensibly to explain his recent interactions with Stalin. Beria had Lakoba over for dinner the next day, where he was served fried trout, a favorite of Lakoba's and a glass of poisoned wine. They attended the opera after the dinner, watching the play Mzetchabuki (მზეჭაბუკი; "Sun-boy" in Georgian). During the performance Lakoba showed the first signs of his poisoning and returned to his hotel room, where he died early the next morning. Officially, Lakoba was said to have died of a heart attack, though a previous medical examination in Moscow had showed he had arteriosclerosis (thickening of the arteries), cardiosclerosis (thickening of the heart), and erysipelas (skin inflammation) in the left auricle that had led to his hearing loss. His body was returned to Sukhumi, though notably all the internal organs (which could have helped identify the cause of death), were removed. Knight suggests that Stalin must have authorised Lakoba's murder, as Beria would not have dared to kill someone as prominent as Lakoba without his leader's approval. It is notable that though telegrams of condolence came from various leading officials throughout the Soviet Union, Stalin himself did not send one, and did not attempt to look into what role, if any, Beria may have played in Lakoba's death. Lakoba was accused of "nationalist deviationism", of having helped Trotsky, and of trying to kill both Stalin and Beria. Despite the immediate denunciations, Lakoba was laid in state in Sukhumi for two days, and was given an elaborate state funeral on 31 December, which 13,000 people attended, though not Beria (though he did help take the coffin back to Sukhumi). The first female Abkhazian aviator Meri Avidzba circled her aircraft overhead as part of the funeral. Initially buried in the Sukhumi Botanical Garden, Lakoba's body was moved the first night to St. Michael's Cemetery in Sukhumi, where it stayed for several years before being returned to its original place. According to Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, Beria had Lakoba's body exhumed and burned on the pretext that an "enemy of the people" did not deserve burial in Abkhazia; this may possibly have been done to hide evidence of poisoning. ### Aftermath In the months that followed Lakoba's death, members of his family were implicated on charges against the state. His two brothers were arrested on 9 April 1937, and his mother and Sariya were arrested on 23 August of that year. A trial of thirteen members of Lakoba's family was conducted between 30 October and 3 November 1937 in Sukhumi, with charges including counter-revolutionary activities, subversion and sabotage, espionage, terrorism, and insurgent organization in Abkhazia. Nine of the defendants, including Lakoba's two brothers, were shot on the night of 4 November. Rauf, Lakoba's 15-year-old son, tried to speak to Beria, who visited Sukhumi to view the start of the trial. He was promptly arrested as well. Sariya was taken to Tbilisi and tortured in order to extract a statement implicating Lakoba, but refused, even after Rauf was tortured in front of her. Sariya would die in prison in Tbilisi on 16 May 1939. Rauf was sent to a labour camp, and was eventually shot in a Sukhumi prison on 28 July 1941. With Lakoba dead, Beria effectively took control of Abkhazia and implemented a policy of "Georgification". Abkhaz officials were purged, ostensibly on charges of trying to assassinate Stalin. The policy's greatest impact involved the settlement of thousands of ethnic Mingrelian farmers across Abkhazia, which displaced the ethnic Abkhaz and reduced their overall proportion of the population within the region. Beria abandoned Lakoba's policy of striving for ethnic harmony. Favouring his fellow Mingrelians, he succeeded in fulfilling the aims of a project first begun in 1933 at the start of the Soviet Union's Second five-year plan, to populate Abkhazia with ethnic Mingrelians who would ideally serve as a counter-balance to the Abkhaz. ## Legacy During the remainder of the Stalinist era, Lakoba was seen as an "enemy of the people", and he was only rehabilitated in 1953. A statue was built in his honour in the Sukhumi Botanical Gardens in 1959, and he was subsequently honoured in Abkhazia. In 1965 Mikhail Bgazhba, the First Secretary of the Abkhaz Communist Party from 1958 until 1965, wrote a short biography of Lakoba, largely rehabilitating him. In Abkhazia, he is revered as a hero, and associated with its first major success of culture and development. A museum dedicated to the life of Lakoba was established in Sukhumi, though it burnt down during the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia. Plans to build a new museum were announced by the de facto Abkhaz government in 2016. After his death, Lakoba's collected papers were initially buried to keep them from being destroyed. They were retrieved several years later by his brother-in-law, the only member of his family to survive. The papers were first brought to Batumi, Georgia. Starting in the 1980s they were slowly returned to Abkhazia, with many eventually given to Princeton and Stanford Universities.

Alloxylon pinnatum

Tree of the family Proteaceae found in south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales

Alloxylon pinnatum, known as Dorrigo waratah, is a tree of the family Proteaceae found in warm-temperate rainforest of south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales in eastern Australia. It has shiny green leaves that are either pinnate (lobed) and up to 30 cm (12 in) long, or lanceolate (spear-shaped) and up to 15 cm (5.9 in) long. The prominent pinkish-red flower heads, known as inflorescences, appear in spring and summer; these are made up of 50 to 140 individual flowers arranged in corymb or raceme. These are followed by rectangular woody seed pods, which bear two rows of winged seeds. Known for many years as Oreocallis pinnata, it was transferred to the new genus Alloxylon by Peter Weston and Mike Crisp in 1991. This genus contains the four species previously classified in Oreocallis that are found in Australasia. Its terminal globular flowers indicate that the species is pollinated by birds. Classified as near threatened under the Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992, the Dorrigo waratah has proven difficult to keep alive in cultivation. ## Description The Dorrigo waratah is a rainforest tree that reaches 25 m (82 ft) high, with a non-buttressed trunk of 1.5 m (5 ft) diameter at breast height (dbh). The bark is greyish brown and covered in many small pimples, rendering it sandpaper-like in texture. The green foliage consists of several distinct juvenile and adult leaf forms, which are arranged alternately along the stems. Juvenile leaves are light green and at first simple, with a single blade. Successive leaves on more mature plants become more complex, or pinnate, with deep lobes; these leaves are up to 30 cm (12 in) long with 2–11 leaflets. Some adult leaves are simple—with a single lanceolate leaf blade—and up to 15 cm (5.9 in) long; these are generally located near the flower heads. Among the green foliage there are occasional yellow leaves. New branchlets and leaves are covered in brown hair. The pinkish-red compound flowerheads, known as inflorescences, are up to 20 cm (8 in) across in spring to summer, and contain between 50 and 140 smaller flowers, arranged in a corymb or raceme. These individual flowers are 3–3.8 cm (1+1⁄8–1+1⁄2 in) long and sit atop stalks (known as pedicels) up to 3.5 cm (1+3⁄8 in) in length, which arise in pairs off the main stalk within the inflorescence. Each flower consists of a tubular perianth, which partly splits along one side at anthesis to release the thick style. The stigma is contained within a slanting disc-like structure at the tip of the style. The tubular perianth splits into four segments at its tip, and the anther lies in the concave parts within each of these segments. The flower parts are smooth and hairless. The pollen is crimson. After flowering, the 8–10 cm (3.1–3.9 in) long woody seedpod develops. Cylindrical in shape, it splits down one side to release the seeds, which are ripe from February to June. They are arranged in two rows, with at least four seeds in each row. Each seed is separated from the others by a membranous separator, and has a long rectangular wing, which is much longer than the seed itself. The Dorrigo waratah can be distinguished from other members of the genus Alloxylon by its pinnate adult leaves. This feature serves to differentiate it as other species in the genus have simple adult leaves. The other species have inflorescences with fewer flowers (50 maximum), and have yellow pollen. ## Taxonomy First described as a variety of what was then known as Embothrium wickhamii by Joseph Maiden and Ernst Betche in 1911 after a collection by J.L.Boorman, the Dorrigo waratah was raised to species status and reclassified as Oreocallis pinnata by Dutch botanist Hermann Otto Sleumer in 1954. The Australian members of the genus Oreocallis were recognised as markedly distinct from the South American species, which saw them allocated to the new genus Alloxylon. Hence, Oreocallis pinnata was given the new combination Alloxylon pinnatum in 1991 by Peter Weston and Mike Crisp of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. The species name refers to the pinnate leaves. Aside from Dorrigo waratah, it has also been called the Dorrigo oak, red silky oak, tree waratah, pink silky oak, red oak, Queensland waratah, and waratah oak. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek allo-, meaning "other" or "strange", and xylon, meaning "wood". It refers to the genus's unusual cell architecture compared with the related genera Telopea and Oreocallis. A. pinnatum and the other three tree waratah species lie in the subtribe Embothriinae, along with the true waratahs (Telopea), Oreocallis and the Chilean firetree (Embothrium coccineum) from South America. Almost all these species have red flowers that are terminal (arising at the ends of branches), and hence the subtribe's origin and floral appearance most likely predates the splitting of the supercontinent Gondwana into Australia, Antarctica, and South America over 60 million years ago. The position, colour and tubular shape of the flowers suggest that they are bird-pollinated, and have been so since the radiation of nectar-feeding birds such as honeyeaters in the Eocene. Triporopollenites ambiguus is an ancient member of the Proteaceae known only from pollen deposits, originally described from Eocene deposits in Victoria. The fossil pollen closely resembles that of the Tasmanian waratah (Telopea truncata), A. pinnatum and Oreocallis grandiflora. Cladistic analysis of morphological features within the Embothriinae showed A. pinnatum to be the earliest offshoot within the genus and sister to the other three species. Along with members of other genera in the Embothriinae, A. pinnatum has crimson pollen, while the other three Alloxylon species have yellow pollen. Hence the ancestral pollen colour was likely red, and remained so with the emergence of the genus Alloxylon, yet changed to yellow after the divergence of A. pinnatum. ## Distribution and habitat The Dorrigo waratah is found in warm-temperate rainforest from altitudes of 700 to 1,250 m (2,300 to 4,100 ft) along the McPherson Range in south-east Queensland and the Dorrigo Plateau in northern New South Wales, with dominant tree species such as coachwood (Ceratopetalum apetalum) and Antarctic beech (Lophozonia moorei). In Queensland it is associated with golden sassafras (Doryphora sassafras) and native crabapple (Schizomeria ovata). It commonly grows on southern aspects of hills and slopes. ### Conservation status The Dorrigo waratah is classified as 3RCa under the Rare or Threatened Australian Plant (ROTAP) criteria for threatened species, and listed as near threatened under the Queensland Nature Conservation Act 1992. The flowers are visited by the rare Richmond birdwing butterfly (Ornithoptera richmondia), which occurs in the same region. In 2016, the Dorrigo waratah was one of eleven species selected for the Save a Species Walk campaign in April 2016; scientists walked 300 km (190 mi) to raise money for collection of seeds to be prepared and stored at the Australian PlantBank at the Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan. Protected areas in New South Wales in which it grows include Bellinger River National Park and Dorrigo National Park. ## Cultivation The bright, prominently displayed flowers and bird-attracting properties of the Dorrigo waratah make it a desirable garden plant. It reaches only about 6–10 m (20–33 ft) in cultivation, but has proven difficult to grow. The Dorrigo waratah has been successfully cultivated at the Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra in a sheltered position in part-shade with a thick layer of mulch. It is propagated most easily by seed, which is ripe from February to June and keeps for around twelve months. Seedlings often perish when they reach 15 cm (6 in) high, and are difficult to transplant. It has also been grown at Mount Tomah Botanic Garden, where it was noted to be exacting in its requirements, needing very good drainage as well as a sheltered location to survive. It is slow growing; specimens planted in 1989 have been flowering since 1999. The considerably easier to grow Queensland tree waratah (A. flammeum) has been considered as a stock plant for grafting. The pinkish red timber has been used for making cabinets and furniture. It is soft and light, weighing 500 kg (1100 lb) per cubic metre. The cut flowers have a long vase life.

Villa Park

Football stadium in Aston, Birmingham

Villa Park is a football stadium in Aston, Birmingham, with a seating capacity of 42,657. It has been the home of Premier League side Aston Villa since 1897. The ground is less than a mile from both Witton and Aston railway stations and has hosted sixteen England internationals at senior level, the first in 1899 and the most recent in 2005. Villa Park has hosted 55 FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium, and it is the 10th largest in England. In 1897, Aston Villa moved into the Aston Lower Grounds, a sports ground in a Victorian amusement park in the former grounds of Aston Hall, a Jacobean stately home. The stadium has gone through various stages of renovation and development, resulting in the current stand configuration of the Holte End, Trinity Road Stand, North Stand and Doug Ellis Stand. Before 1914, a cycling track ran around the perimeter of the pitch where regular cycling meetings were hosted as well as athletic events. Aside from football-related uses, the stadium has seen various concerts staged along with other sporting events including boxing matches and international rugby league and rugby union matches. In 1999, the last final of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup took place at Villa Park. Villa Park also hosted the 2012 FA Community Shield, as Wembley Stadium was in use for the final of the Olympic football tournament. Aston Villa have plans to redevelop the North Stand: this would increase the capacity of Villa Park from 42,682 to 50,065. Such plans also include the construction of an accompanying commercial and entertainment venue dubbed "Villa Live". In December 2022, the plans were approved by Birmingham City Council. ## History Villa Park, formerly part of Aston Lower Grounds, was not the first home of Aston Villa F.C. Their previous venue, Wellington Road, faced increasing problems including an uneven pitch, poor spectator facilities, a lack of access and exorbitant rents. As a result, in 1894 Villa's committee, led by Frederick Rinder began negotiations with the owners of the Aston Lower Grounds, "the finest sports ground in the district." Situated in the former grounds of Aston Hall, a Jacobean stately home, the Lower Grounds had seen varied uses over the years. Originally the kitchen garden of Aston Hall's owner Sir Thomas Holte, after whom the Holte End stand was named, the Lower Grounds later became a Victorian amusement park with an aquarium and a great hall. The current pitch stands on the site of the Dovehouse Pool, an ornamental pond that was drained in 1889. In place of the pool, the owners of the Lower Grounds built a cycle track and sports ground that opened on 10 June 1889 for a combined cycling and athletics event before a crowd of 15,000. Negotiations continued for two years before the Villa committee reached agreement with the site's owner, Edgar Flower, to rent the site for £300 per annum on a 21-year lease with an option to buy it at any point during the term. Much of the credit for the design of Villa Park must to go to Villa Chairman Frederick Rinder, who as a trained Surveyor, is said to have laid down every ‘level and line’ of the ground himself before construction began. The committee immediately engaged an architect who began preparing plans for the site, which included construction of a new 440 yards (400 metres) cement cycle track to replace the existing cinder one. The main stand was to be built to the east on the Witton Lane side, with the track and pitch fully enclosed by banking. Construction of the final phase of the stadium began in late 1896 after negotiations with contractors over the price. Several months behind schedule, the almost-complete stadium opened with a friendly against Blackburn Rovers on 17 April 1897, which ended as a 3–0 win, one week after Aston Villa had completed the League and FA Cup 'Double'. The process of fixing issues with the building work continued for several months. As built, the stadium could house 40,000 spectators, most of whom stood in the open on the banking. After winning the league championship in 1899, Villa's record-breaking average crowd of 21,000 allowed the club to invest in a two-stage ground improvement programme. The first stage extended the terrace covering on the Trinity Road side at the cost of £887; the second cost £1,300 and involved re-laying all terracing around the track to remedy a design flaw that caused poor sightlines for the majority of the crowd. In 1911, Villa bought the freehold of the ground for £8,250, the office buildings in the old aquarium and car park area for £1,500 and the carriage drive and bowling green for £2,000. This was the first stage in plans drawn up by Villa director Frederick Rinder that saw the capacity of Villa Park increased to 104,000. In June 1914, another phase of enhancements began at Villa Park to compete with improvements at other grounds around the country, including Everton's Goodison Park, where a new two-tiered stand had just been completed. The first stage of improvements saw the cycling track removed, new banking at the Holte Hotel End (Holte End), and a re-profiling of all the terracing to bring it closer to the newly squared-off pitch. Rinder turned to the renowned architect Archibald Leitch to design a new Villa Park. Their joint plans included large banked end stands at the Holte and Witton ends and the incorporation of the original Victorian Lower Grounds buildings, including the aquarium and the newly acquired bowling greens. The outbreak of the First World War severely hampered design and construction efforts. As a result of inflation, 1919 quotes for the implementation of the pre-war construction plans came to £66,000, compared to the 1914 quote of £27,000. By March 1922 this price had reduced to £41,775, and the directors pushed ahead with the plans for the new Trinity Road Stand. Construction began in April 1922 with the stand partially opened in August. Construction continued throughout the 1922–1923 season, with the stand officially opened on 26 January 1924 by the then Duke of York, later King George VI. He commented to Rinder that he had "no idea that a ground so finely equipped in every way—and devoted to football—existed." On completion the Trinity Road Stand was considered one of the grandest in Britain, complete with stained glass windows, Italian mosaics, Dutch gables in the style of Aston Hall and a sweeping staircase. The Oak Room in the Trinity Road stand was the first restaurant at a British football ground. Several commentators including Simon Inglis consider it to be Leitch's masterpiece; a Sunday Times reporter described it in 1960 as the "St Pancras of football." The final cost of the stand and associated 1922–1924 ground developments was calculated at £89,000, a sum that enraged the club's directors who ordered an investigation into cost and in 1925 forced Rinder's resignation. Villa Park remained in much the same state for another 30 years, with no major developments until the late 1950s. During the 1930s the earth and timber terraces with wooden crash barriers were completely replaced by concrete terracing and metal barriers, a process first begun by Rinder. In 1936 he was voted back onto the board at the age of 78 after the club were relegated to the Second Division. Nearly 25 years after he had created his 1914 masterplan, Rinder resurrected it and looked to carry out the third phase of his developments. He died in December 1938 (Leitch had died in April), leaving his construction business to his son, Archibald Junior. The complete redevelopment and extension of the Holte End began in early 1939, supervised by Archibald Junior. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, all construction across the country stopped. Unusually, given the austerity measures in place at the time, Villa acquired a special permit to continue construction of the Holte End; Simon Inglis notes "How they achieved this is not recorded". Work on the ground was completed by April 1940, and the stand was immediately mothballed as Villa Park switched to its wartime role. The Trinity Road Stand became an air-raid shelter and ammunition store while the home dressing room became the temporary home of a rifle company from the 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. German bombs caused £20,000 worth of damage to the Witton Lane Stand, which was remedied by 1954. In the late 1950s, four projects were announced. The old Bowling Green pavilion on the Trinity Road became a medical centre, the basement of the aquarium building was converted into a gym, four large floodlight pylons were installed, and a training ground was purchased 500 yards (460 metres) from Villa Park. The floodlights were first used in November 1958 for a friendly match against the Scottish side Heart of Midlothian. In mid-1962, £40,000 was spent on a roof for the Holte End, the first to provide cover for the ordinary terrace fans at Villa Park since 1922. The old barrel-shaped roof on the Witton Lane Stand, the only remaining feature of the 1897 Villa Park, was removed in the summer of 1963 and replaced with a plain sloping roof in the same style as the Holte End. Villa Park was chosen by FIFA to host three matches for the 1966 World Cup on the condition that the Witton Lane Stand became all-seater. The players' tunnel had to be covered with a cage while the pitch was widened by 3 yards (2.7 metres). Regular ground developments and innovations began from 1969 under the direction of the new chairman, Doug Ellis, who set about redeveloping Villa Park for the modern era. Much of the stadium had fallen into disrepair and was in need of modernisation; Villa's attendances and financial situation had also declined as a result of losing their First Division status in 1967 and going down to the Third Division for the first time in 1970. Ellis updated the infrastructure, installed a new public address system, carried out plumbing work which included installing new toilets, resurfaced the terraces, and built a new ticket office. His tenure saw executive lounges replace the old offices in the Trinity Road Stand. Redevelopment of the Witton End stand began in the summer of 1976, a year after Villa returned to the First Division after eight years away. The stand had not seen any major work since 1924, and its rear remained a mound of earth. Initial renovations saw the levelling of the earth and new concrete terraces constructed on the lower tier in preparation for the construction of an upper tier. Stage two began in February 1977 and was officially opened in late October. The stand's design and fittings were impressive for the time, including novelties such as an 'AV' logo spelled out in coloured seats and a double row of executive boxes. As well as the new Witton End stand, renamed the North Stand, Villa Park went through further renovations throughout the ground. The cost of the work was £1.3 million. As a result, and as with the construction of the Trinity Road Stand fifty years earlier, Villa were again burdened with debt. An internal investigation found that £700,000 of the £1.3 million worth of bills were unaccounted for. A later report by accountants Deloitte Haskins & Sells found that the bills were inflated by only 10% but that there were "serious breaches of recommended codes of practice and poor site supervision". In response to the Hillsborough disaster which resulted in 96 fatalities, the Taylor Report of January 1990 recommended that all major grounds be converted to become all-seater as a safety measure by August 1994. Within a few months of the Taylor Report being published, the first changes were made in line with the report. The North Stand saw the addition of 2,900 seats to the lower tier of the stand in place of terracing, the Holte End's roof was extended in preparation for more seats, the Trinity Road Stand had its roof replaced, and the Witton Lane Stand had more corporate boxes added. By that time, all four floodlight pylons had been removed to make way for boxes or in preparation for seating, and new floodlights were installed on new gantries on the Trinity and Witton stands. In February 1992, the club's application to the council for permission to demolish the Holte Hotel was rejected. After several months of negotiations, Villa gained permission for a new stand to replace the Witton Lane Stand. The new design meant that the club had to realign Witton Lane and, as a condition of the planning permission, pay £600,000 to compulsory purchase the houses along Witton Lane and upgrade the road from a B to an A road, as well as moving its utilities. The stand was fully operational by January 1994 at the cost of £5 million with 4,686 seats, which brought Villa Park up to a capacity of 46,005. It was announced at the 70th birthday gala of chairman Doug Ellis that the stand was to be renamed the "Doug Ellis Stand", a move that caused some controversy among Villa fans with some still referring to it as the Witton Lane Stand. Nevertheless, during the 1993–94 season, the newly rebuilt Witton Lane Stand became the Doug Ellis Stand. The Holte End was the only remaining stand that did not meet the Taylor Report requirements, and a structural survey revealed that putting seats onto the existing terracing would be uneconomical. Instead, the decision was taken to build a new stand consisting of two tiers, just four years after construction of the new roof. The demolition of the stand began on the last day of the 1993–94 season. Its replacement began to open in August 1994 with 3,000 seats in the lower tier occupied for the first seating-only game at Villa Park. By December it was fully operational and had a capacity of 13,501 seats, bringing the Villa Park capacity to 40,310. Upon completion, the Holte was the largest single end stand in Britain. The next development at Villa Park was the Trinity Road Stand in 2000. It had stood since 1922 and seen several renovations and additions. The demolition of the old stand began after the last game of the 1999–2000 season, an event met with an element of sadness from observers such as Simon Inglis who stated that "the landscape of English football will never be the same." The new stand was larger than the old one, taking Villa's capacity from 39,399 to its present 42,682. It was officially opened in November 2001 by Prince Charles; his grandfather George VI had opened the old stand, 77 years earlier, when he was still the Duke of York. ## Structure and facilities Villa Park has 42,682 seats, split between four stands. These four stands are the Holte End to the south, the Trinity Road Stand to the west, the Doug Ellis Stand opposite the Trinity Road Stand, and the North Stand behind the northern goal. All of the stands have two tiers except the Trinity Road Stand, which has three. The Holte End is a large two-tiered stand at the south end of the stadium. Originally a large terraced banking with accommodation for more than 20,000 spectators, the current stand was constructed in 1994–1995 and consists of two tiers with no executive boxes. The two tiers are slightly curved in a parabola to provide good sightlines from all seats. Inside there are three levels of concourse and the Holte Suite, a large hospitality room for supporters. The roof is a variant of the "King Truss" system and the front third slopes slightly forward. Two large staircases, pediments, Dutch gables and a mosaic introduced in the 2007 season in the style of the old Trinity Road Stand make up the facade, itself inspired by Aston Hall. The Holte End is the most renowned stand at Villa Park amongst home and away team supporters. Traditionally Villa's most vocal and passionate supporters gather here, including members of Aston Villa hooligan firms. Built in 2000, the main Trinity Road Stand is the most recently completed at Villa Park and houses the dressing rooms, club offices and director's boxes. The stand is composed of three tiers with a row of executive boxes between the second and third tiers. Although much larger than the other stands, the stand has roughly the same roof level as the other three sides. The players' tunnel and the technical area where the managers and substitutes sit during the match are in the middle of the stand at pitch level. The press and the directors' VIP area are situated in the centre of the middle tier. The upper tiers of the stand extend over Trinity Road, the street that cuts behind the ground. Trinity Road passes through a tunnel formed by the Trinity Road Stand. The oldest stand at Villa Park is the North Stand, formerly known as the Witton End, completed in 1977. It is a two-tiered stand, with a double row of 39 executive boxes running between the two tiers. Upper-tier seats are claret with "AV" written in blue; the lower tier consists of sky blue seats. The North Stand was "the first major stand in Britain to use what is now broadly termed the 'goalpost' structure." The facade of the stand is a "textured concrete render" typical of the time. Since the segregation of supporters in the 1970s, away fans had been situated in the lower tier of the North Stand. Former manager Martin O'Neill expressed his desire to have Villa fans seated in the North Stand to improve the atmosphere at Villa Park. For the start of the 2007–2008 season the club released cut-price season tickets for the lower tier of the stand. This meant moving the away fans to the northern end of the Doug Ellis Stand across both tiers and since then the North Stand has been fully occupied by Villa supporters with the most vocal and fervent being housed in the lower tier. The Doug Ellis Stand, formerly known as the Witton Lane Stand, is a two-tiered stand with a row of executive boxes between the tiers. The roof was originally planned to be a goalpost structure, the same as the Holte End and North Stand, but the plans were changed to a simpler cantilever design. It saw slight refurbishment before the 1996 European Championships to join the corners with the lower tier of the North Stand, improve legroom and increase the curve of the terracing to improve sightlines. The main television camera viewpoint is on the half-way line in the Doug Ellis Stand. In the south-west corner, between the Holte End and the Trinity Road Stand, there is a three-storey pavilion-like structure, which is used for corporate hospitality. There is a large television screen. On 28 November 2009, a bronze statue of former Villa chairman and Football League founder William McGregor was unveiled outside the stadium. Behind the North Stand is the "Villa Village" made up of club and ticket offices as well as a club shop. The club bought the buildings from British Telecom in the 1990s. Under current redevelopment plans, the "Villa Village" is set to be demolished, in favour of a significantly larger retail venue called "Villa Live". ## Future Future redevelopment of Villa Park has been an ever-present topic, with previous owners of Aston Villa: notably Randy Lerner and Tony Xia, expressing support to increase capacity. However, no definitive redevelopment occurred in either case. Under the current ownership of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, there has been concrete support for a long-term redevelopment of Villa Park. In December 2021, CEO Christian Purslow announced that redevelopment plans were forecasted to take "two to ten years". Preliminary plans to construct a new North Stand were announced in March 2022. Following a consultation process between June and September 2022, Aston Villa formally submitted plans to fully demolish and rebuild the North Stand, alongside developments to the Trinity Road Stand. The plans would see the construction of a new 13,074 capacity stand. Alongside minor seating adjustments to the Trinity Road Stand and Doug Ellis Stand, this would increase Villa Park's capacity to approximately 50,065. Alongside these featured plans to develop a large indoor entertainment and retail venue called "Villa Live", replacing the car park, academy building, and the current on-site retail store. This followed initial planning permission granted in 2019 to demolish the car park and academy building behind the North Stand. In December 2022, planning permission was granted by Birmingham City Council Within the aforementioned planning documents, Aston Villa alluded to potential further redevelopment via 'configuration of the stands', including the Doug Ellis Stand and the Holte End, to increase Villa Park's capacity to between 52,000 and 53,000. This was referred to as 'Phase 2': with the North Stand redevelopment considered 'Phase 1'. ## Other sporting uses Villa Park was the first English ground to stage international football in three centuries and has hosted matches in several international tournaments. Three 1966 World Cup matches were played at the ground and four matches during Euro '96. The ground has hosted England internationals, the first in 1899 and the most recent in 2005. Sixteen international matches have been hosted at the stadium in total. Villa Park has been the venue for several Cup competitions. It has hosted 55 FA Cup semi-finals, more than any other stadium. The club hosted the League Cup Final in 1980–1981 when Liverpool beat West Ham 2–1 in a replay. In 1999, the stadium hosted the last final of the European Cup Winners' Cup in which Lazio beat Real Mallorca 2–1. During the construction of the new Wembley Stadium between 2001 and 2005, the FA Trophy Final was held at Villa Park. The 2012 Community Shield was held at Villa Park instead of Wembley due to Olympic Games at the stadium. The venue has also hosted two first-class cricket matches. The first was the United North of England Eleven's final first-class match against a London United Eleven in June 1879. The second was tour match played between Australia and an England XI side in May 1884. The ground also hosted a 1897 Minor Counties Championship match between Staffordshire and Northamptonshire and was the home ground for Aston Unity in the Birmingham and District Premier League from 1889 to 1954. Many athletics and cycle events took place at the ground before the First World War, and boxing has been hosted on several occasions. On 28 June 1948, Dick Turpin, brother of Randolph Turpin, became the first non-white boxer to win a British title in a fight against Vince Hawkins in front of 40,000 spectators after the British Boxing Board of Control lifted their ban on non-whites challenging for titles. On 21 June 1972 Danny McAlinden defeated Jack Bodell in a British and Empire Heavyweight title fight. Great Britain secured the first ever rugby league test series at the ground when they defeated the touring Australian Kangaroos side 6–5 on 14 February 1909 in front of a crowd of 9,000. A second rugby league game followed three years later on New Year's Day 1912 when 4,000 people turned up to see Australia beat Great Britain 33–8. The stadium has seen several international rugby union tour matches. On 8 October 1924, a North Midlands XV lost 40–3 to the New Zealand side touring Europe and Canada at the time. The second game took place on 30 December 1953 when Midlands Counties played another New Zealand side on their 1953–1954 tour of United Kingdom, Ireland, France and North America. The Midlands side lost 18–3. On 26 August 1985, it played host to the first ever American football "Summerbowl," intended to be the English equivalent to the Super Bowl. The game was played between the London Ravens and the Streatham Olympians, and the low attendance of 8,000 meant that the Summerbowl was not repeated in subsequent years. Villa Park was originally listed as one of the six stadiums that would hold Olympic football matches in the 2012 Summer Olympics. In 2009 it was announced that the organising committee for the games and the football club had decided that uncertainty around expansion plans meant that the club were "unable to commit fully to hosting matches". Villa Park was chosen as the venue for two pool matches in the 2015 Rugby World Cup. The first was a Pool B match between South Africa and Samoa on 26 September 2015 with South Africa winning 46–6 with 39,526 in attendance. The second was a Pool A match between Australia and Uruguay the next day with Australia winning 65–3 in front of 39,605 spectators. Birmingham is the host city of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Though Villa Park was originally chosen to host the Rugby Sevens competition, the event will now be held at the Ricoh Arena. This is due to the Premier League season starting in July in order to accommodate the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar taking place in November and December, rather than June and July. ## Non-sporting uses Villa Park has been a venue for musicians from multiple genres as well as preachers. The stadium has hosted several rock concerts, including Bruce Springsteen who played two concerts in June 1988 as part of his Tunnel of Love Tour, and again in June 2023 as part of his 2023 Tour, Bon Jovi in 2013 as part of the Because We Can: The Tour, and Pink in June 2023 during her Summer Carnival Tour. Duran Duran held a charity concert in 1983 to raise money for MENCAP. Other singers who have played at the ground include Belinda Carlisle, Rod Stewart and Robert Palmer. The American evangelist Billy Graham attracted 257,181 people to a series of prayer meetings held at the stadium in mid-1984. Archbishop Desmond Tutu held a religious gathering at the stadium in 1989. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it was announced that midwives from Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust would host maternity clinics at the ground, for expectant parents anxious about going into hospitals. On 2 February 2021, it was announced that Villa Park will be used as a regional COVID-19 vaccination centre by the NHS. The first patients were vaccinated at Villa Park on 4 February 2021. The vaccination centre has been set up in the Holte End stand and it is hoped to play a pivotal role in vaccinating people in the Birmingham area. ## Average league attendances ## Records The highest attendance recorded at Villa Park was 76,588, on 2 March 1946 in an FA Cup 6th round tie against Derby County. The highest attendance in the all-seater era was 42,788 on 29 December 2009 in a Premier League game against Liverpool, but the overall record league attendance was 69,492 in a First Division match against Wolverhampton Wanderers on 27 December 1949. The highest average post-Second World War attendance at Villa Park was 47,168 in the 1948–1949 season; the lowest average post-war attendance was 15,237 in the 1985–1986 season. ## Transport Villa Park is within a short distance of two mainline railway stations. Witton railway station is approximately 500 metres (0.3 miles) from Villa Park, and Aston railway station is approximately 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles). Under former owner Randy Lerner, there have been discussions on changing the name of Witton Station to Villa Park as is the case with West Bromwich Albion's local railway station, The Hawthorns. Aston Villa's former CEO, Bruce Langham, has said that the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive (Centro) are amenable to the idea as long as it is done at the expense of the club. No action has yet been taken. ## See also - Development of stadiums in English football

Little Tich

English music hall comedian

Harry Relph (21 July 1867 – 10 February 1928), professionally known as Little Tich, was a 4-foot-6-inch-tall (137 cm) English music hall comedian and dancer during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was best known for his acrobatic and comedic "Big-Boot Dance", which he performed in Europe and for which he wore boots with soles 28 inches (71 cm) long. Aside from his music hall appearances, he was also a popular performer in Christmas pantomimes and appeared in them annually at theatres throughout the English provinces. He repeated this success in London, where he appeared in three pantomimes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, between 1891 and 1893 alongside Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd. Born in Cudham, Kent, Little Tich began performing aged ten when he developed a dance and tin-whistle act which he showcased at public houses in Sevenoaks. In the early 1880s he formed a blackface act and gained popularity with performances at the nearby Rosherville Pleasure Gardens and Barnard's Music Hall in Chatham. He travelled to London and appeared at the Forester's Music Hall in 1884. Later that year, he adopted the stage name "Little Tich", which he based on his childhood nickname of "Tichborne", acquired through his portly stature and physical likeness to the suspected Tichborne Claimant Arthur Orton. The terms "titchy" or "titch" were later derived from "Little Tich" and are used to describe things that are small. Little Tich's act further developed during a tour of the United States between 1887 and 1889 where he established the Big-Boot Dance and impressed audiences with his ability to stand on the tips of the shoes and to lean at extraordinary angles. In the 1890s he developed the Serpentine Dance and had a major success with the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood in Manchester during the 1889–90 season. In 1891, he was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear in that year's spectacular Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Christmas pantomime Humpty Dumpty. He starred in a further two productions at the theatre including Little Bo Peep (1892) and Robinson Crusoe (1893). Between 1896 and 1902 Little Tich performed in his own musical theatre company, and spent much of his time in Paris, where he became a popular variety artist. For his music hall acts, he created characters based on everyday observations. The characterisations used were "The Gas Inspector", "The Spanish Señora" and "The Waiter"; all three were later recorded onto shellac discs, of which he made twenty in total. He was married three times and fathered two children. In 1927 he suffered a stroke, which was partly triggered by a blow to the head which he had accidentally received during an evening performance at the Alhambra Theatre. He never recovered fully from the injury, and died the following year at his house in Hendon, aged 60. ## Biography ### Family background and early life Little Tich was born Harry Relph in Cudham, Kent (now in the London Borough of Bromley). He was the last of eight children born to Richard Relph (1790–1881), a farmer and publican, and his wife Mary, née Moorefield (1835–1893). The Relph family were close and lived in relative affluence. Richard Relph was a committed family man and was known in the village for his sharp business acumen. His early wealth, which was attributed to a series of successful horse-trading deals, enabled him to purchase his first public house, the Rising Sun in Fawkham. In 1818 he married Sarah Ashenden and they had eight children; she died in 1845. In 1851 he moved to Cudham, bought the Blacksmith's Arms and an adjoining farm, and started a new family with Mary Moorefield, a nurse-maid governess from Dublin. Little Tich was born with an extra digit on each hand, webbed from the little finger to the centre joint. He also experienced stunted growth. He reached 4 feet 6 inches (137 cm) in height by the age of ten, but grew no taller. His physical differences from other children caused him to become socially withdrawn and lonely. Nevertheless, his disabilities earned him fame and were an asset to his parents' business. Patrons would travel from neighbouring counties to witness his peculiarities, and the youngster revelled in the attention, dancing comically on his father's saloon bar to curious guests. Little Tich was educated at Knockholt, a three-mile walk from Cudham. From an early age, he displayed considerable academic ability and also excelled in art; by the time he was five, his drawings were being sold to patrons of the Blacksmith's Arms by his father. Little Tich became interested in the travelling performers whom his father often employed to entertain guests at the inn. He would mimic the dancers, singers and conjurors, causing much amusement to both his family and his patrons. So good were his impersonations that his siblings frequently took him to neighbouring public houses where they would get him to perform in exchange for money. These experiences prepared Little Tich for his future career. As a result of what he saw, he, like his father, became a strict teetotaller in later years, and showed a deep loathing for boisterous and intoxicated people. Little Tich revelled in his local celebrity status; however, the older he got the more self-conscious he became and wrongly interpreted the audience's laughter as being aimed more at his disabilities rather than his comical performances. ### Move to Gravesend and early performances Richard Relph sold the Blacksmith's Arms and the adjoining farm in 1875 and moved his family to Gravesend. The socially withdrawn Little Tich was forced to adapt to much busier surroundings; day-trippers, holidaymakers and fishermen often frequented the streets and occupied the plethora of public houses which adorned the port and neighbouring roads. He resumed his education, this time at Christ Church School, where he spent the next three years. In 1878 the headmaster deemed him too educationally advanced for the school, and Richard Relph was advised to secure for his young son a watchmaking apprenticeship instead; Relph ignored the advice. By 1878 Little Tich's parents were unable to financially provide for him further and he sought full-time employment as a lather boy in a barber's shop in Gravesend. One evening, together with a friend whose brother was appearing in a talent contest, he visited a music hall for the first time and quickly became "hooked" on the idea of being able to perform. Thanks largely to his local celebrity status of being a "freak", he was welcomed into the many public houses which catered for soldiers, sailors, merchant seamen and day-trippers from London. By 1878, Little Tich had saved enough money to buy himself a tin whistle which he used to "amuse [him]self by playing all the jolly and sentimental pantomime songs of the day". To earn money, he began busking to local theatre goers who were waiting in the outside queues. On the way home from his busking performances, he devised eccentric dances, much to the amusement of his onlooking neighbours. Little Tich made his stage debut as Harry Relph at the age of 12 in 1879. The venue—although unidentified—was described by his daughter Mary as being a "back-street, free-and-easy" where the acts were predominantly made up of amateurs and beginners. The audiences were often harsh and they would display their displeasure by throwing objects onto the stage. One evening, having exhausted the list of amateur talent, the compere called on Little Tich and his tin-whistle to take up the next turn. The performance was a success and Little Tich returned every night, often accompanying his tin-whistle piece with impromptu dance routines. News of his performances spread, and he was soon signed up by the proprietor of the neighbouring Royal Exchange music hall, who bought his new signing a pair of clogs. Little Tich became a popular draw at the hall and often sang thirty songs a night. It was here that he discovered the art of blackface, a popular type of entertainment widely performed around the British Isles at the time. ### 1880s #### Early London engagements At the start of the 1880s, Little Tich assumed the stage name "The Infant Mackney" and graduated to the world of open-air theatre. The following year, he joined a blackface troupe who performed regularly at the Rosherville Pleasure Gardens; the local historian J.R.S. Clifford described them as "a band of minstrel darkies of a superior type". Little Tich's transition from amateur to professional performer came when he appeared in a weekly spot at Barnard's Music Hall in Chatham. Lew Barnard, the hall's proprietor, offered him 35 shillings a week. Thrilled at the prospect of appearing in a proper music hall, Little Tich changed his name from The Infant Mackney to Young Tichborne, a nickname he had gained while living in Cudham years earlier. He enjoyed initial success at Barnard's, but audience numbers soon diminished and his pay was reduced to 15 shillings a week as a result. To supplement his income, he resumed his position in the barber's shop and took on a string of menial jobs that lasted six months. In 1881 Little Tich left home with his sister Agnes, who chaperoned her young brother around the music halls and variety clubs throughout England. By now, he had swapped the tin-whistle for a picco pipe which he used to accompany his clog dancing routine. He despised his early experiences of provincial touring as he was often forced to sleep in dosshouses with very little money or food. To survive, he would often return to busking outside music halls to the waiting audiences. In the early months of 1884, he secured an engagement at a rundown public house called The Dolphin in Kidderminster, where he was paid £2 a week. He also hired his first agent who, unbeknown to Little Tich, had advertised him as a "freak" and a "six-fingered novelty". The comedian was furious with the description and quickly dispensed with the agent's services. By the summer months, his engagements had become infrequent so he used the long periods of unemployment constructively. He learned how to read and write music and taught himself to play various musical instruments including the piano, fiddle and cello. He also mastered dancing in big boots. In November 1884 he changed his stage name for the third time to Little Tich, which derived from Tichborne, and "Tich" or "Tichy" became a common term meaning small. His reasoning for the name change was to capitalise on the release of the Tichborne claimant fraudster Arthur Orton who was then touring the British Isles in the hope of reopening the case. The change of name also coincided with the signing of a new agent who was known in London for being "one of the brightest and youngest in [show]business". The agent, Edward Colley (1859–1889), was equally thrilled with the acquisition of a new star and secured him a double engagement at the Marylebone Music Hall where he appeared as "Little Titch, The Most Curious Comique in Creation" and immediately after at the Forester's Music Hall, where he was billed as "Little Titch, the Funny Little Nigger". A reporter for The Era predicted "We shall probably hear a great deal more about Little Titch, [sic] as he seems to be one of the few that can invest the business of the Negro comedian with any humour." By Christmas 1884, Little Tich was a resident performer in four London music halls: the Middlesex Music Hall where he had an 8 pm billing, the Marylebone (at 9 pm), the Star Palace of Varieties in Bermondsey (at 10 pm), and Crowders Music Hall in Mile End (at 11 pm). Out of the four halls, he had the most success at the Marylebone and fulfilled a ten-week run. A critic for The Era who witnessed him perform at the Marylebone thought that he was "a curious comic" and that "his antics, his sayings and his business generally [were] very amusing, and he will doubtless improve in his singing, which is weak at present, even for a Negro delineator". The commentator further noted that "he appear[ed] to be quite a young man at present; but his dancing is peculiarly funny, though his dress in one of his characters is vulgar and suggestive; this should be altered". Having been a success in London for nearly a year, Little Tich travelled to Scotland to appear in pantomime for the first time during the 1885–86 Christmas season. Robinson Crusoe opened at the Royal Princess Theatre in Glasgow and he appeared in the small role of Chillingowadaborie, a black-faced attendant for one of the main characters King Tum-tum. The following Christmas, Little Tich starred for a second time in pantomime, this time at the Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel in a production of Cinderella in which he played "King Mischief". #### American success The American impresario Tony Pastor came to England in 1886 and signed Little Tich for a tour of the United States. Pastor had seen the comedian perform at a small music hall called Gatti's-in-the-Road near to Westminster Bridge and was recruiting for his Gaiety Theatre Company. Little Tich left for America in the early months of 1887 and assumed his first role for Pastor in a burlesque version of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, playing the lead character for a fee of £10 a week. Later, during a successful run in a parody of Louis Bertin's opera La Esmeralda, he impressed audiences with his "Big-Boot Dance", and Pastor engaged his new star for a further two seasons in the mock-opera which had a total run of nine months. To show his appreciation for the record profits and huge audience attendances, Pastor presented Little Tich with a gold medal and a rare white Bohemian Shepherd dog which the comedian called Cheri. Little Tich's success under Pastor brought him to the attention of the Chicago State Opera Company, who secured him on a two-year contract for a fee of \$150 a week. Before the contract commenced, he was allowed to travel back to England where he honoured a pantomime commitment by appearing in Dick Whittington at the Theatre Royal in Brighton. In the piece he took the billing of "Tiny Titch" and played the Emperor Muley. In June 1888, at the Chicago Opera House, Little Tich starred in The Crystal Slipper, a burlesque loosely based on Cinderella; the production was a hit for the comedian and completed a run of over ten months. The Era described him as "the quaint little Negro comedian" and called his American engagement "brilliantly successful". During The Crystal Slipper, Little Tich met the English dancer Laurie Brooks, whom he married in Cook County, Illinois on 20 January 1889. That year marked the end of Little Tich's "blacking up" routine, which he had performed in between his commitments for the Chicago State Opera Company. He was told by a producer that the American audiences would find the black face and English accent too much of a contrast and opined "a deaf mute with one eye could see you aint a coon". Little Tich initially became worried at the prospect of appearing on stage without make-up, but found that the audience approved of the change. As the months progressed, the tour matured and news of his performances travelled across America. To compensate for the loss of his blackface act, Little Tich perfected his Big-Boot Dance instead and swapped from 10 to 28 inches (25 to 71 cm) boots which he found more suitable for his size. He had also mastered a quick change into the novelty footwear which he could perform in minutes. One stage director became concerned that the pause was too long for the audience to wait, and he threw the boots onto the stage causing the star to run back out in front of the waiting audience to put the boots on in front of them. While he did this, the orchestra provided an accompaniment of "till ready" music. For the audience, this provided much hilarity and they assumed it was part of the act. The unintentional sketch was "an instant hit" and the comedian incorporated this into his future Big-Boot Dance routine. In April 1889 Little Tich briefly returned to London to star at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square where he was poorly received by audiences. As a result, the manager of the theatre reduced the comedian's wages to £6 a week. The experience left him bitter towards the English entertainment industry and he returned to America to appear in a new production for the Chicago State Opera. The production, Bluebeard Junior, was not as successful as its predecessor, but toured for seven months. Despite his bad reviews back in England, Little Tich began to feel homesick and he was allowed to return home a few months short of his contract expiration. Once back, he and his wife set up home at 182 Kennington Road, Lambeth; Laurie later gave birth to the couple's son Paul on 7 November 1889. ### 1890s #### Return to London and West End debut In the later months of 1889 Little Tich secured an engagement at the London Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus. This time, he found his English critics to be complimentary about his talent, but as their praise was largely about his success in America, he considered them hypocritical. News of his much-improved performances travelled throughout the country and he was visited by Thomas W. Charles, manager of Manchester's Prince's Theatre. Charles offered Little Tich a leading role in his forthcoming pantomime Babes in the Wood. The 1889–90 production was a huge success for the comedian and his performance reportedly earned him "the heartiest applause of the evening". By the early months of 1890, Augustus Harris, the influential manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, had travelled to Manchester to look for new talent for his theatre's forthcoming 1890–91 pantomime. Impressed with what he saw, he offered the comedian a theatrical residency at Drury Lane but he was forced to withdraw it as Little Tich was contracted to Charles for a further year; Harris instead signed Little Tich for a two-year contract starting the following season. The deal required Little Tich to star in two pantomimes for a wage of £36 a week. Following on from his success in Babes in the Wood which culminated in April 1890, the theatre manager Rollo Balmain cast him as Quasimodo in a production of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth. The show featured a burlesque centrepiece which required Little Tich to dress as a ballerina and gave him the opportunity to perform two of his earliest songs, "Smiles" and "I Could Do, Could Do, Could Do with a Bit", both written for him by Walter Tilbury. In 1890 Little Tich continued to impress his London music hall audiences and appeared on the front covers of both the Entr'acte and the Music Hall magazines, with the latter being widely available in the majority of London music hall auditoriums. Towards the end of the year, Little Tich appeared at the opening of the Tivoli Music Hall, before returning to Manchester at Christmas to fulfil the second of his two pantomime engagements for Thomas Charles in Little Bo-peep, in which he played Toddlekins. The following year he reprised his role of Quasimodo and toured the provinces in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame with Balmain's company. #### Life at Drury Lane The year 1891 signalled a new era in the career of Little Tich. The Drury Lane pantomimes were known for their extravagance and splendour and featured lavish sets and big budgets. The first of the Drury Lane pantomimes in which Little Tich appeared was Humpty Dumpty in 1891 which also starred Drury Lane regulars Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell. As well as the title role, Little Tich also played the minor part of the Yellow Dwarf in the harlequinade. It was during the latter characterisation that he revived his Big-Boot Dance, which was a hit with audiences. The following Christmas, he equalled this success with his second pantomime Little Bo-Peep in which he played the part of "Hop of my Thumb". As well as Leno, Lloyd and Campbell, Harris recruited the singers Ada Blanche and Cecilia Loftus as principal boy and girl respectively. Harris was thrilled with Little Tich and signed him for the 1893–94 pantomime Robinson Crusoe in which he played Man Friday. The Derby Daily Telegraph called the comedian "one of the most amusing pantomime dames of all time". Despite a budget of £30,000, Robinson Crusoe failed to equal the success of the previous two shows, which caused Harris to rethink his cast. Unaware of Harris's plans, Little Tich approached him with a view of a pay rise; the proposition angered the manager and not only was his request refused, but he was also ruled out of any future production. #### New theatrical ventures and international engagements In the early months of 1891, Little Tich completed a successful tour of Germany. Two years later he developed the character Miss Turpentine for his self-choreographed sketch The Serpentine Dance, which he performed over the next three years in Hamburg, Geneva, Rotterdam, Brussels, Nice, Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Budapest; the tour also enabled him to become fluent in French, German, Italian and Spanish. He portrayed Miss Turpentine as an eccentric ballerina who wore an ill-fitting tutu. The dance was a comic variation of the well-known skirt dance belonging to Loie Fuller, which had been popular in France years earlier. Another successful characterisation was that of an eccentric Spanish dancer, which Little Tich devised while touring Europe, and like The Serpentine Dance, relied heavily on acrobatic choreography and comic miming rather than eccentric singing and joke reciting. It was around this period when Little Tich was inducted into the fledgling entertainers' fraternity, the Grand Order of Water Rats. In 1906, he would serve as "King Rat" for the order. In 1894, free from his contractual obligations at Drury Lane, he took a three-year break from the English music hall scene and travelled to France to fulfil a number of engagements; over the next ten years, he divided his time between there and England. In the early months of 1895, he moved from music hall to variety theatre, a transition which many of his contemporaries had already successfully achieved. Lord Tom Noddy was showcased in September 1896 and ran at the Garrick Theatre, London for two months. The production had minimal success in the capital but was received well in the provinces. The show provided Little Tich with the chance to promote himself as a serious actor and to separate himself from the reputation of simply being the "deformed dwarf from the music hall". The audience were described as being "very large" whose "bursts of laughter w[ere] frequent and loud". A reporter for the Edinburgh Evening News thought that Little Tich was "the life and soul of the sketch" whose singing was "fairly good while [his] dancing was smart", while the critic William Archer dismissed Little Tich as being the "Quasimodo of the music halls, whose talent lies in a grotesque combination of agility with deformity". He formed his own theatre company in mid-1895, and produced his first show called Lord Tom Noddy, in which he also starred. He commissioned the dramatist George Dance to write the piece and made him a partner in the company. On 11 December 1896, Little Tich was invited to appear at the Folies Bergère in France, where he starred in a short piece as Miss Turpentine and performed the Big-Boot Dance. One journalist for the Sunday Referee claimed that "no artist since Loie Fuller, four years earlier, had scored such a success", and as a result, he signed a two-year contract at the Folies. Little Tich returned to England in the later months of 1897, where he self-produced the second of his company's two shows, a musical comedy called Billy. Despite the show enjoying a healthy provincial tour after opening in Newcastle, one reporter thought that "it ha[d] not very much to recommend it", but thought that Little Tich gave "some excellent fooling" and that it "[was] impossible not to laugh at some of the eccentricities". However, the farce failed to make it to the West End of London. Little Tich saw this as a snub and he refused to perform in the capital again. Instead, he travelled to South Shields, where he appeared briefly in a successful short play called Giddy Ostend before retreating to France. In 1898 he broke the Folies contract shortly before its expiry after being scouted by Joseph Oller, who hired him to perform at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris. Following the breach of contract, the Folies manager Édouard Marchand initiated legal action against the comedian, who settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The theatrical manager C.B. Cochran who had seen the comedian perform during this period, described him as "a reincarnation of the dwarf court-jesters of the Middle Ages—the little English Don Antonio of Velasquez". By now, Little Tich had become frustrated with his English audiences. With Billy failing to reach London and the unequal level of success in the English capital compared to France made him shun the English variety theatre scene altogether in the final years of the century. He returned to the less-popular music halls as a result, where he remained for the rest of his career. ### 1900s #### Marriage troubles In September 1894, Little Tich and Laurie established the family home in the rue Lafayette, Paris. During 1897, while Little Tich was away on a tour of England, Germany and Austria, Laurie eloped to Berlin with the French actor François Marty, leaving her husband responsible for their young son Paul. Unable to care for Paul, Little Tich sent him to England to live with relatives. That year, Little Tich met the dancer Julia Recio during an engagement at the Olympia Music Hall in Paris and the two began a relationship. They moved to a flat in the boulevard Poissonnière, Paris, where they lived together, though keeping this a secret until after Laurie Relph's death in 1901. In 1900 Little Tich appeared in the French capital's Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre where he performed the Big-Boot Dance, which was recorded on film by the French director Clément-Maurice. Years later, the film-maker Jacques Tati called the piece "a foundation for everything that has been realised in comedy on the screen". In 1902, Little Tich starred in a special, one-off revue with Marie Lloyd at the Tivoli theatre called The Revue, which was staged to celebrate the coronation of Edward VII. The following year, Little Tich's performance at the Oxford Music Hall was described as being "... a very droll turn" by a reporter for The Cornishman newspaper, who also called his Big-Boot Dance "wonderful". Little Tich rented another London property at 1 Teignmouth Road in Kilburn, to escape his life with Julia, which he was finding increasingly mundane. Despite their troubles, he married Julia in a discreet London ceremony on 31 March 1904 at St Giles Register Office and rented a further address at 44 Bedford Court Mansions in Bloomsbury. Although initially happy, the marriage quickly deteriorated as a result of differing opinions over social activities and money; Julia was a sociable and extravagant person, whilst Little Tich preferred a quieter and thriftier lifestyle. By 1906, Little Tich and Julia had become so estranged that she moved to a neighbouring flat, rented for her by her husband. The couple never publicly announced their separation, and he continued to provide financial support for his wife and fund her extravagant lifestyle for the next twenty years. Years later, Paul Relph admitted "Father and Julia never loved one another. Poor, poor father. His life was one long misery through her." Over the next four years, Little Tich continued to perform in both England and France and earned £10,000 a year. In 1905 he appeared in the second of a further three films for the French film industry called Le Raid Paris–Monte Carlo en deux heures, directed by Georges Méliès. This was followed by Little Tich in 1907, and Little Tich, the Tec two years later. In 1907 Little Tich travelled to South Africa, where he appeared in a successful, nine-week engagement for a fee of £500 a week. Soon after, he returned to England to take part in the Music Hall War, which saw the Variety Artistes' Federation fight for more freedom and better working conditions on behalf of music hall performers. In 1909 he received a serious leg injury while on stage at the Belfast Hippodrome during a performance of the Serpentine Dance. A doctor in the audience diagnosed a dislocated knee, which forced the comedian to take seven weeks' recuperation. Little Tich's performance was described by a reporter for the Evening Telegraph and Post as being "up to date" and declared the Serpentine Dance was "next to the Big-Boot Dance in popularity". #### Recording career and new family In 1910, Little Tich became the adoptive father of Rodolphe Knoepper, an orphan born in 1899 to the brother of the Russian acrobat Harry Alaska. Alaska had previously worked for Little Tich as his dresser and after his death, Knoepper moved into the Relph residence in France and started his education there. After a few months of living with Little Tich, he was moved to London to stay with Julia. In later years Little Tich's daughter Mary said that her father treated Knoepper as more of a son than Paul, who became estranged from the family by the 1920s. While in Paris in 1910, Little Tich was made an officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Ministry of Public Instruction for his services to the stage. Towards the end of 1910, he travelled to Scotland to complete a short engagement at the King's Theatre in Dundee. His performance was described by a theatre reviewer for the Evening Telegraph as being "downright genuine fun" and "very entertaining". The following year Little Tich recorded the first of a selection of his music hall songs on one-sided shellac discs used in the early acoustic recording process. Songs included "The Gas Inspector", "King Ki-Ki", "The Toreador" and "The Zoo Keeper" and were followed two years later by "The Waiter", "The Weather", "The Don of the Don Juans" and "A Risky Thing to Do". In 1915 Little Tich cut short his engagement at the Golders Green Hippodrome to take up a better offer in Paris. As a result, the proprietors of the Hippodrome sued for breach of contract and he had to pay them £103 in compensation. That year he recorded "The Tallyman", "The Gamekeeper", "The Skylark" and "The Pirate" onto disc before heading to the northern English provinces to prepare for that year's Christmas pantomime at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool. It was there that he met Winifred Latimer (1892–1973), a singer and actress who had had some success on the London stage under Seymour Hicks a few years previously. Tich and Winifred were both starring in the Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor, in which Little Tich played the title role and Winifred supported him as the principal boy. The two grew close and against her parents wishes, they began a relationship, shortly before the pantomime closed in the early months of 1916. Sinbad the Sailor was a big success and Winifred was widely praised for her performance, which she attributed to the guidance she received from Little Tich. In 1916 Winifred moved into a rented flat in Camden, chosen by Little Tich for its close proximity to his house in Bedford Square; this enabled him to visit her with less chance of being recognised. In 1917 he recorded "Tally-Ho!" and "The Best Man", the final two songs from his repertoire, onto shellac discs. That year Winifred became pregnant, which ended her career on the stage, a situation which pleased Little Tich immeasurably. However, Winifred was ostracised by her family and had to contend with life as an unmarried mother with no career and no chances of ever realising her remaining theatrical ambitions. On 23 February 1918, while Little Tich was performing in Brighton, she gave birth to a daughter whom she named Mary. She and Mary then moved to 64 Gloucester Place in Marylebone. #### Last years and death By 1920, relations between Little Tich and Winifred's parents had improved and they welcomed him into the family. Despite renting a new, six-room flat in Marylebone for his daughter and mistress, the comedian was now finding it increasingly difficult to support Winifred, Mary and Julia on his earnings as the years of generosity had drastically depleted his savings. His annual income in 1921 and 1922 had topped £9,750 but had dropped to £3,743 by 1923. In 1925 he earned £6,300 but this fell the following year to just £2,100. Worried by the drastic reduction in pay, he reduced Julia's payments, which angered her family. Another money-saving plan was to stop renting properties in London and secure a mortgage on a small house instead. To avoid speculation about his affair with Winifred, he decided to remain at Bedford Court Mansions, and bought a newly built house in Shirehall Park, Hendon, North-West London in September 1925 for Winifred and Mary to move into. Soon after, he embarked on a successful tour of Europe which culminated at Christmas the same year. He returned to London and took part in a Christmas benefit at the London Coliseum, where he performed the Big-Boot Dance. The performance was by then proving too strenuous for the 58-year-old comedian, and he decided to retire it that year. On the morning of 7 January 1926, Julia Relph died of a cerebral haemorrhage in the flat which Little Tich had rented for her. Despite their estrangement, the comedian was distraught at her death and spent two nights at the apartment with her corpse. A few days later, he moved in with Winifred where he arranged his wife's funeral, staying in the spare bedroom as a "house guest". He made frequent visits back to Bedford Court Mansions to organise Julia's paperwork and discovered that his wife had been having an affair with his friend Emile Footgers and that she was ten years older than she had led her husband to believe. Little Tich also found that she had used his money to buy a house in Golders Green as a future investment for Paul's daughter Constance, and that his wife had participated in a secret scam to blackmail the comedian out of large quantities of cash. Despite the revelations, Little Tich mourned deeply for his wife and spoke fondly of her for the rest of his life. On 10 April 1926, Little Tich married Winifred at Caxton Hall, Westminster, with little publicity. Later that evening, he appeared at the Camberwell Palace in a short but popular engagement, while his new wife returned home to Hendon. For the honeymoon, the family travelled to Bristol, where Little Tich appeared on stage with the French actress Mistinguett, who presented him with a tributary gold statue of him wearing big boots. At the end of that year, the family paid a working visit to Australia, where he toured the Sydney theatres for a fee of £300 a week; he received a lukewarm reception from audiences. The following March, Little Tich and his family returned to England. He made only one appearance on stage that year, in November, when he introduced a new song called "The Charlady at the House of Commons". For the character's appearance he wore a ripped and dirty frock, a scrag wig and carried an old mop and bucket which he borrowed from home. The act required him to flip the mop up into the air and grab the handle before carrying on singing. During one evening's performance at the Alhambra Theatre, the trick went wrong and he received a blow to his head from the mop. Despite the pain, he continued with the piece and refused to seek medical treatment for the resulting bump and intense headache which followed. One December morning in 1927, whilst getting ready for a family day out, Little Tich was conversing with his wife who was in a separate room, upstairs at Shirehall Park. When he stopped responding, she became concerned, went to the room where her husband was, and found him slumped and insensible in a chair. He was taken to hospital where doctors diagnosed a stroke. He became mute and lost all feeling on the right side of his body, but was discharged from hospital and returned home to Hendon. He was frequently visited by the surgeon Sir Alfred Fripp, who made a secondary diagnosis of pernicious anaemia which he cited as having played an instrumental part in the comedian's seizure. On the morning of 10 February 1928, Little Tich died at his home in Shirehall Park, Hendon, aged 60 and he was later buried at East Finchley Cemetery. His death and funeral were national news. The author and theatre critic Walter MacQueen-Pope predicted that Little Tich would be remembered for his "physical peculiarity and the expression 'tichy', meaning small". A reporter for The Daily News called him "[the] comedian whose popularity had never waned and whose name was as famous in 1928 as it was when music-halls flourished 30 years ago". Writing in 1974, the author Naomi Jacob thought that Little Tich would be remembered for many years to come stating that "there is no reason why such names as Little Tich and Marie Lloyd should be forgotten any more than such names as Salvini, Bernhardt and Henry Irving".

Geoff Bent

English footballer (1932–1958)

Geoffrey Bent (27 September 1932 – 6 February 1958) was an English footballer who played as a left back for Manchester United from 1948 until 1958. He was one of the Busby Babes, the young team formed under manager Matt Busby in the mid-1950s. Bent only made twelve first-team appearances for Manchester United, who already had an international-quality left back in Roger Byrne. Modern writers speculate that at most other teams Bent would have been a regular starter, and he was the subject of interest from fellow First Division clubs, but Busby refused to let him leave. He was one of eight Manchester United players who died in the Munich air disaster, when their aircraft crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport after a European Cup match in Belgrade. ## Early life Geoffrey Bent was born on 27 September 1932 at Irlams o' th' Height in Salford, Lancashire. He was the only child of Clifford Bent, a surfaceman at Sandhole Colliery, and his wife Clara (née Dunning). He grew up in a matriarchal working-class family; his father was the sole money earner, but his mother ran the household and had more influence on her son. The family lived in a small house in Jackson's Buildings, Salford, at the back of a shop; the only entrance was from a side alley, and the house had no indoor toilet. Bent received his education in Swinton; he first attended St John's Junior School, and then was awarded a scholarship to Tootal Road Grammar School. He was a member of both the Boy Scouts and the Boys' Brigade, and a keen swimmer. In 1946, aged 13, Bent saved another child from drowning in the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal, and was awarded a medal by his local Humane Society. Although Bent was encouraged to play rugby league by both his father, who supported the local Swinton club, and one of his teachers, he was only ever interested in playing association football. Bent began as a forward, playing at inside left, but later moved into the defence, first as a half back and then left back. He played for Barton Villa in local league football, and in the 1946–47 season, he captained the Salford Schoolboys team to victory in the English Schools Trophy, beating a Leicester team in the final. His performances for Salford drew the attention of several prominent clubs. Bent's mother did not want him to leave home, and she swayed him to sign a contract with Manchester United. At the time, players were not allowed to sign a professional contract with a team until the age of 17, so like many of his teammates, Bent also took on an apprenticeship as a joiner, a trade he continued during the summer breaks between football seasons. During the early stages of his time with Manchester United, Bent met Marion Mallandaine, initially when he had been dating her younger sister, Betty. His relationship with Betty did not last very long, and he settled down with Marion, whom he married on 27 June 1953 in Pendlebury, and the couple later moved into one of the football club's houses on King's Road, not far from the club's home ground of Old Trafford. ## Manchester United career Bent initially joined Manchester United as a trialist in August 1948, then as an amateur alongside his apprenticeship in May 1949. Over the following few years, he played for United's youth and reserve teams, where he excelled. Manchester United had a nucleus of young, upcoming players, so these teams were often very strong; Bent appeared alongside players such as Bobby Charlton, Wilf McGuinness, David Pegg and Duncan Edwards. In April 1951, aged 18, Bent signed a professional contract with the club. Bent had been expected to replace John Aston Sr. at left back in the Manchester United first team; Aston was one of the older players in the team and injuries led to his retirement at the end of the 1953–54 season. Bent's teammate Roger Byrne, who had deputised for Aston to make his Manchester United debut in 1951, had made it clear early in the 1952–53 season that he wanted to play at left back, requesting a transfer when the Manchester United manager Matt Busby played him on the left wing instead. Busby relented, and Byrne returned to left back. Byrne became Manchester United captain in February 1954, and it was clear that Bent would not be preferred for the position. Bent made his first-team debut for Manchester United in December 1954 against Burnley, in place of Byrne, who had a neck injury. He appeared once more that season, when Byrne was on international duty for England in April. Bent's appearances were again sporadic in the 1955–56 season, deputising for either Byrne or Bill Foulkes; he played three times in October, and then once in April. Modern commentators suggest that at almost any other First Division club, Bent would have been a regular member of the first team, and he twice requested a transfer. On both occasions, Busby turned down the request, explaining that he was too valuable for the club to lose. His wife, Marion, believed that several other First Division teams were interested in Bent, including Wolverhampton Wanderers, who along with Manchester United were one of the more successful clubs of the 1950s. In 1956–57, Bent played six times, each time standing in for either Byrne or Foulkes. Despite his infrequent first-team appearances, Bent was well thought of, both within the club, as evidenced by Busby's refusal to sell him, and beyond. In an article published in the Manchester Evening News in 1955, Byrne described the positive effect that having strong reserve players such as Bent, who he called a "valuable prospect", had on the team, specifying that; "I for one have really got to strive to keep my position". Foulkes later echoed claims that Bent would have been a first-team regular for most other clubs, and went on to describe him as being "quiet and more studious" than many of his teammates. In his history of the victims of the Munich air disaster, Jeff Connor describes Bent as "tall, well built and a strong tackler", and his biography in The Official Manchester United Illustrated Encyclopedia calls him a "good tackler and accurate passer". ## Munich air disaster Bent did not play any first-team games during the 1957–58 season, having been on the sidelines for several months with a broken foot, the second such injury he had suffered during his time with the club. He was on crutches when visiting hospital in September 1957 for the birth of his daughter, Karen. By February 1958, Bent was fully recovered, and had returned to action for the reserve team. He was not initially included in the travelling party for the second leg of the European Cup quarter-final against Red Star Belgrade. Bent did not enjoy flying, suffering from nose bleeds and requiring ear drops when he did so, and Ronnie Cope was going to travel with the team as a reserve for the experience of a European away fixture. In the days leading up to the trip, Byrne complained of an injury niggle, and so Busby called up Bent for the trip in case Byrne could not play. Bent complained to his wife about the trip, saying: "I don't know why they're taking me, because I'm sure Roger will be fit." Ultimately, Bent was proved right; Byrne recovered and played the match which United drew 3–3. As they had won the first leg 2–1, United won the two-legged tie and progressed to the semi-finals. Snow had been falling for most of the game in Belgrade, but the weather was better for the team's flight home the next morning, 6 February. As the aircraft approached Munich-Riem Airport, the snow worsened once more. The plane landed safely, and the players disembarked while the plane was refuelled. A short time later, with the passengers back on board, the plane made two aborted attempts to take off, each time suffering from apparent engine problems. The passengers were asked to disembark again while the pilots discussed the issue with the ground crew, and fifteen minutes later they were ready to try again. On the third attempt, the plane reached 117 knots (217 km/h; 135 mph), the plane's takeoff decision speed, the speed above which take off can no longer safely be aborted, but then hit slush on the runway, and dropped speed. The plane failed to take off, and crashed off the end of the runway, through the barrier fencing, and across a road. Different parts of the plane hit a tree, a house and a wooden hut which exploded. Bent was one of twenty-one people who died before the emergency services arrived—a death toll which included eight journalists and seven Manchester United players. Two more died from their injuries over the following few weeks, taking the total number of fatalities to twenty-three. Bent's funeral and interment were held on 13 February at St John's Church in Pendlebury. ## Legacy Although he was not a regular starter, Bent was considered to be one of the Busby Babes, the young team formed at Manchester United under manager Matt Busby in the 1950s which won the First Division in both the 1955–56 and 1956–57 seasons. Bent's name, along with the others who died in Munich, appears on a memorial plaque at Old Trafford, and there is also a memorial stone in Munich, near the site of the crash. The neglected state of his grave has been a regular press story; in 1988 the Manchester Evening News ran a story, in which Bent's widow said she could not afford to maintain the grave. Similar stories appeared in 2005 and 2015; in each instance Manchester United said they would look to provide regular maintenance. ## Career statistics ## Notes, citations and sources

Windsor Castle

Official country residence of British monarch

Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is strongly associated with the English and succeeding British royal family, and embodies almost a millennium of architectural history. The original castle was built in the 11th century, after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I (who reigned 1100–1135), it has been used by the reigning monarch and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. The castle's lavish early 19th-century state apartments were described by the art historian Hugh Roberts as "a superb and unrivalled sequence of rooms widely regarded as the finest and most complete expression of later Georgian taste". Inside the castle walls is the 15th-century St George's Chapel, considered by the historian John Martin Robinson to be "one of the supreme achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic" design. Originally designed to project Norman dominance around the outskirts of London and oversee a strategically important part of the River Thames, Windsor Castle was built as a motte-and-bailey, with three wards surrounding a central mound. Gradually replaced with stone fortifications, the castle withstood a prolonged siege during the First Barons' War at the start of the 13th century. Henry III built a luxurious royal palace within the castle during the middle of the century, and Edward III went further, rebuilding the palace to make an even grander set of buildings in what would become "the most expensive secular building project of the entire Middle Ages in England". Edward's core design lasted through the Tudor period, during which Henry VIII and Elizabeth I made increasing use of the castle as a royal court and centre for diplomatic entertainment. Windsor Castle survived the tumultuous period of the English Civil War, when it was used as a military headquarters by Parliamentary forces and a prison for Charles I. At the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II rebuilt much of Windsor Castle with the help of the architect Hugh May, creating a set of extravagant Baroque interiors. After a period of neglect during the 18th century, George III and George IV renovated and rebuilt Charles II's palace at colossal expense, producing the current design of the state apartments, full of Rococo, Gothic and Baroque furnishings. Queen Victoria made a few minor changes to the castle, which became the centre for royal entertainment for much of her reign. In the reign of George VI, it was used as a refuge by the royal family during the Luftwaffe bombing campaigns of the Second World War. An extensive restoration of several state rooms took place after the castle survived a fire in 1992. It is a popular tourist attraction, a venue for hosting state visits, and was the main residence of Elizabeth II from 2011 to 2022. ## Architecture Windsor Castle grounds cover 13 acres (52,609 square metres) and combines the features of a fortification, a palace, and a small town. The present-day castle was created during a sequence of phased building projects, culminating in the reconstruction work after a fire in 1992. It is in essence a Georgian and Victorian design based on a medieval structure, with Gothic features reinvented in a modern style. Since the 14th century, architecture at the castle has attempted to produce a contemporary reinterpretation of older fashions and traditions, repeatedly imitating outmoded or even antiquated styles. As a result, architect Sir William Whitfield has pointed to Windsor Castle's architecture as having "a certain fictive quality", the Picturesque and Gothic design generating "a sense that a theatrical performance is being put on here", despite late 20th century efforts to expose more of the older structures to increase the sense of authenticity. Although there has been some criticism, the castle's architecture and history lends it a "place amongst the greatest European palaces". ### Middle Ward At the heart of Windsor Castle is the Middle Ward, a bailey formed around the motte or artificial hill in the centre of the ward. The motte is 50 feet (15 m) high and is made from chalk originally excavated from the surrounding ditch. The keep, called the Round Tower, on the top of the motte is based on an original 12th century building, extended upwards in the early 19th century under architect Jeffry Wyatville by 30 feet (9.1 m) to produce a more imposing height and silhouette. The interior of the Round Tower was further redesigned in 1991–1993 to provide additional space for the Royal Archives, an additional room being built in the space left by Wyatville's originally hollow extension. The Round Tower is in reality far from cylindrical, due to the shape and structure of the motte beneath it. The current height of the tower has been criticised as being disproportionate to its width; archaeologist Tim Tatton-Brown, for example, has described it as a mutilation of the earlier medieval structure. The western entrance to the Middle Ward is now open, and a gateway leads north from the ward onto the North Terrace. The eastern exit from the ward is guarded by the Norman Gatehouse. This gatehouse, which, despite its name, dates from the 14th century, is heavily vaulted and decorated with carvings, including surviving medieval lion masks, traditional symbols of majesty, to form an impressive entrance to the Upper Ward. Wyatville redesigned the exterior of the gatehouse, and the interior was later heavily converted in the 19th century for residential use. ### Upper Ward The Upper Ward of Windsor Castle comprises a number of major buildings enclosed by the upper bailey wall, forming a central quadrangle. The State Apartments run along the north of the ward, with a range of buildings along the east wall, and the private royal apartments and the King George IV Gate to the south, with the Edward III Tower in the south-west corner. The motte and the Round Tower form the west edge of the ward. A bronze statue of Charles II on horseback sits beneath the Round Tower. Inspired by Hubert Le Sueur's statue of Charles I in London, the statue was cast by Josias Ibach in 1679, with the marble plinth featuring carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The Upper Ward adjoins the North Terrace, which overlooks the River Thames, and the East Terrace, which overlooks the Home Park; both of the current terraces were constructed by Hugh May in the 17th century. The East Terrace has a private formal rose garden, first laid out by George IV in the 1820s. The present garden was updated by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, after it was used for victory garden production during World War II, tended in part by Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. In 2020 it was announced that for a limited time the garden would be open to the public for the first time in 40 years. Traditionally the Upper Ward was judged to be "to all intents and purposes a nineteenth century creation ... the image of what the early nineteenth-century thought a castle should be", as a result of the extensive redesign of the castle by Wyatville under George IV. The walls of the Upper Ward are built of Bagshot Heath stone faced on the inside with regular bricks, the gothic details in yellow Bath stone. The buildings in the Upper Ward are characterised by the use of small bits of flint in the mortar for galletting, originally started at the castle in the 17th century to give stonework from disparate periods a similar appearance. The skyline of the Upper Ward is designed to be dramatic when seen from a distance or silhouetted against the horizon, an image of tall towers and battlements influenced by the picturesque movement of the late 18th century. Archaeological and restoration work following the 1992 fire has shown the extent to which the current structure represents a survival of elements from the original 12th century stone walls onwards, presented within the context of Wyatville's final remodelling. #### State Apartments The State Apartments form the major part of the Upper Ward and lie along the north side of the quadrangle. The modern building follows the medieval foundations laid down by Edward III, with the ground floor comprising service chambers and cellars, and the much grander first floor forming the main part of the palace. On the first floor, the layout of the western end of the State Apartments is primarily the work of architect Hugh May, whereas the structure on the eastern side represents Jeffry Wyatville's plans. The interior of the State Apartments was mostly designed by Wyatville in the early 19th century. Wyatville intended each room to illustrate a particular architectural style and to display the matching furnishings and fine arts of the period. With some alterations over the years, this concept continues to dominate the apartments. Different rooms follow the Classical, Gothic and Rococo styles, together with an element of Jacobethan in places. Many of the rooms on the eastern end of the castle had to be restored following the 1992 fire, using "equivalent restoration" methods – the rooms were restored so as to appear similar to their original appearance, but using modern materials and concealing modern structural improvements. These rooms were also partially redesigned at the same time to more closely match modern tastes. Art historian Hugh Roberts has praised the State Apartments as "a superb and unrivalled sequence of rooms widely regarded as the finest and most complete expression of later Georgian taste." Others, such as architect Robin Nicolson and critic Hugh Pearman, have described them as "bland" and "distinctly dull". Wyatville's most famous work are those rooms designed in a Rococo style. These rooms take the fluid, playful aspects of this mid-18th century artistic movement, including many original pieces of Louis XV style, but project them on a "vastly inflated" scale. Investigations after the 1992 fire have shown though that many Rococo features of the modern castle, originally thought to have been 18th century fittings transferred from Carlton House or France, are in fact 19th century imitations in plasterwork and wood, designed to blend with original elements. The Grand Reception Room is the most prominent of these Rococo designs, 100 feet (30 m) long and 40 feet (12 m) tall and occupying the site of Edward III's great hall. This room, restored after the fire, includes a huge French Rococo ceiling, characterised by Ian Constantinides, the lead restorer, as possessing a "coarseness of form and crudeness of hand ... completely overshadowed by the sheer spectacular effect when you are at a distance". The room is set off by a set of restored Gobelins French tapestries. Although decorated with less gold leaf than in the 1820s, the result remains "one of the greatest set-pieces of Regency decoration". The White, Green and Crimson Drawing Rooms include a total of 62 trophies: carved, gilded wooden panels illustrating weapons and the spoils of war, many with Masonic meanings. Restored or replaced after the fire, these trophies are famous for their "vitality, precision and three-dimensional quality", and were originally brought from Carlton House in 1826, some being originally imported from France and others carved by Edward Wyatt. The soft furnishings of these rooms, although luxurious, are more modest than the 1820s originals, both on the grounds of modern taste and cost. Wyatville's design retains three rooms originally built by May in the 17th century in partnership with the painter Antonio Verrio and carver Grinling Gibbons. The Queen's Presence Chamber, the Queen's Audience Chamber and the King's Dining Room are designed in a Baroque, Franco-Italian style, characterised by "gilded interiors enriched with florid murals", first introduced to England between 1648 and 1650 at Wilton House. Verrio's paintings are "drenched in medievalist allusion" and classical images. These rooms were intended to show an innovative English "baroque fusion" of the hitherto separate arts of architecture, painting and carving. A handful of rooms in the modern State Apartments reflect either 18th century or Victorian Gothic design. The State Dining Room, for example, whose current design originates from the 1850s but which was badly damaged during the 1992 fire, is restored to its appearance in the 1920s, before the removal of some of the gilded features on the pilasters. Anthony Salvin's Grand Staircase is also of mid-Victorian design in the Gothic style, rising to a double-height hall lit by an older 18th century Gothic vaulted lantern tower called the Grand Vestibule, designed by James Wyatt and executed by Francis Bernasconi. The staircase has been criticised by historian John Robinson as being a distinctly inferior design to the earlier staircases built on the same site by both Wyatt and May. Some parts of the State Apartments were completely destroyed in the 1992 fire and this area was rebuilt in a style called "Downesian Gothic", named after the architect, Giles Downes. The style comprises "the rather stripped, cool and systematic coherence of modernism sewn into a reinterpretation of the Gothic tradition". Downes argues that the style avoids "florid decoration", emphasising an organic, flowing Gothic structure. Three new rooms were built or remodelled by Downes at Windsor. Downes' new hammer-beam roof of St George's Hall is the largest green-oak structure built since the Middle Ages, and is decorated with brightly coloured shields celebrating the heraldic element of the Order of the Garter; the design attempts to create an illusion of additional height through the gothic woodwork along the ceiling. The Lantern Lobby used to welcome guests features flowing oak columns forming a vaulted ceiling, imitating an arum lily and is where the pre-fire chapel built for Queen Victoria was located. The new Private Chapel is relatively intimate, only able to fit thirty worshippers, but combines architectural elements of the St George's Hall roof with the Lantern Lobby and the stepped arch structure of the Henry VIII chapel vaulting at Hampton Court. The result is an "extraordinary, continuous and closely moulded net of tracery", complementing the new stained glass windows commemorating the fire, designed by Joseph Nuttgen, based on an idea of Prince Philip's. The Great Kitchen, with its newly exposed 14th-century roof lantern sitting alongside Wyatville's fireplaces, chimneys and Gothic tables, is also a product of the reconstruction after the fire. The ground floor of the State Apartments retains various famous medieval features. The 14th-century Great Undercroft still survives, some 193 feet (59 m) long by 31 feet (9.4 m) wide, divided into 13 bays. At the time of the 1992 fire, the Undercroft had been divided into smaller rooms; the area is now opened up to form a single space in an effort to echo the undercrofts at Fountains and Rievaulx Abbeys, although the floor remains artificially raised for convenience of use. The "beautifully vaulted" 14th-century Larderie passage runs alongside the Kitchen Courtyard and is decorated with carved royal roses, marking its construction by Edward III. ### Lower Ward The Lower Ward lies below and to the west of the Round Tower, reached through the Norman Gate. Originally largely of medieval design, most of the Lower Ward was renovated or reconstructed during the mid-Victorian period by Anthony Salvin and Edward Blore, to form a "consistently Gothic composition". The Lower Ward holds St George's Chapel and most of the buildings associated with the Order of the Garter. On the north side of the Lower Ward is St George's Chapel. This huge building is the spiritual home of the Order of the Knights of the Garter and dates from the late 15th and early 16th century, designed in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The ornate wooden choir stalls are of 15th century design, having been restored and extended by Henry Emlyn at the end of the 18th century, and are decorated with a unique set of brass plates showing the arms of the Knights of the Garter over the last six centuries. On the west side, the chapel has a grand Victorian door and staircase, used on ceremonial occasions. The east stained glass window is Victorian, and the oriel window to the north side of it was built by Henry VIII for Catherine of Aragon. The vault in front of the altar houses the remains of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour and Charles I, with Edward IV buried nearby. The chapel is considered by historian John Robinson to be "one of the supreme achievements of English Perpendicular Gothic" design. At the east end of St George's Chapel is the Lady Chapel, originally built by Henry III in the 13th century and converted into the Albert Memorial Chapel between 1863 and 1873 by George Gilbert Scott. Built to commemorate the life of Prince Albert, the ornate chapel features lavish decoration and works in marble, glass mosaic and bronze by Henri de Triqueti, Susan Durant, Alfred Gilbert and Antonio Salviati. The east door of the chapel, covered in ornamental ironwork, is the original door from 1246. At the west end of the Lower Ward is the Horseshoe Cloister, originally built in 1480, near to the chapel to house its clergy. It houses the vicars-choral, or lay clerks of the chapel. This curved brick and timber building is said to have been designed to resemble the shape of a fetlock, one of the badges used by Edward IV. George Gilbert Scott heavily restored the building in 1871 and little of the original structure remains. Other ranges originally built by Edward III sit alongside the Horseshoe, featuring stone perpendicular tracery. As of 2011, they are used as offices, a library and as the houses for the Dean and Canons. Behind the Horseshoe Cloister is the Curfew Tower, one of the oldest surviving parts of the Lower Ward and dating from the 13th century. The interior of the tower contains a former dungeon, and the remnants of a sally port, a secret exit for the occupants in a time of siege. The upper storey contains the castle bells placed there in 1478, and the castle clock of 1689. The French-style conical roof is a 19th-century attempt by Anthony Salvin to remodel the tower in the fashion of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's recreation of Carcassonne. On the opposite side of the chapel is a range of buildings including the lodgings of the Military Knights, and the residence of the Governor of the Military Knights. These buildings originate from the 16th century and are still used by the Knights, who represent the Order of the Garter each Sunday. On the south side of the Ward is King Henry VIII's gateway, which bears the coat of arms of Catherine of Aragon and forms the secondary entrance to the castle. ### Park and landscape Windsor Castle's position on top of steep ground has meant that the castle's gardens are limited in scale. The castle gardens stretch east from the Upper Ward across a 19th-century terrace. Windsor Castle is surrounded by extensive parkland. The immediate area stretching to the east of the castle is a 19th-century creation known as the Home Park. The Home Park includes parkland and two working farms, along with many estate cottages mainly occupied by employees and the Frogmore estate. The Long Walk, a double lined avenue of trees, runs for 2.65 miles (4.26 km) south of the castle, and is 240 ft (75 m) wide. The original 17th century elms were replaced with alternating chestnut and plane trees. The impact of Dutch elm disease led to large-scale replanting after 1945. The Home Park adjoins the northern edge of the more extensive Windsor Great Park, occupying some 5,000 acres (2,020 ha) and including some of the oldest broadleaved woodlands in Europe. In the Home Park, to the north of the castle, stands a private school, St George's, which provides choristers to the chapel. Eton College is located about half a mile from the castle, across the River Thames, reflecting the fact that it was a royal foundation of Henry VI. ## History ### 11th and 12th centuries Windsor Castle was originally built by William the Conqueror in the decade after the Norman conquest of 1066. William established a defensive ring of motte and bailey castles around London; each was a day's march – about 20 miles (32 km) – from the City and from the next castle, allowing for easy reinforcements in a crisis. Windsor Castle, one of this ring of fortifications, was strategically important because of its proximity to both the River Thames, a key medieval route into London, and Windsor Forest, a royal hunting preserve previously used by the Saxon kings. The nearby settlement of Clivore, or Clewer, was an old Saxon residence. The initial wooden castle consisted of a keep on the top of a man-made motte, or mound, protected by a small bailey wall, occupying a chalk inlier, or bluff, rising 100 ft (30 m) above the river. A second wooden bailey was constructed to the east of the keep, forming the later Upper Ward. By the end of the century, another bailey had been constructed to the west, creating the basic shape of the modern castle. In design, Windsor most closely resembled Arundel Castle, another powerful early Norman fortification, but the double bailey design was also found at Rockingham and Alnwick Castle. Windsor was not initially used as a royal residence. The early Norman kings preferred to use the former palace of Edward the Confessor in the village of Old Windsor. The first king to use Windsor Castle as a residence was Henry I, who celebrated Whitsuntide at the castle in 1110 during a period of heightened insecurity. Henry's marriage to Adela, the daughter of Godfrey of Louvain, took place in the castle in 1121. During this period the keep suffered a substantial collapse – archaeological evidence shows that the southern side of the motte subsided by over 6 ft (2 m). Timber piles were driven in to support the motte and the old wooden keep was replaced with a new stone shell keep, with a probable gateway to the north-east and a new stone well. A chemise, or low protective wall, was subsequently added to the keep. Henry II came to the throne in 1154 and built extensively at Windsor between 1165 and 1179. Henry replaced the wooden palisade surrounding the upper ward with a stone wall interspersed with square towers and built the first King's Gate. The first stone keep was suffering from subsidence, and cracks were beginning to appear in the stonework of the south side. Henry replaced the keep with another stone shell keep and chemise wall, but moved the walls in from the edge of the motte to relieve the pressure on the mound, and added massive foundations along the south side to provide additional support. Inside the castle Henry remodelled the royal accommodation. Bagshot Heath stone was used for most of the work, and stone from Bedfordshire for the internal buildings. ### 13th century King John undertook some building works at Windsor, but primarily to the accommodation rather than the defences. The castle played a role during the revolt of the English barons: the castle was besieged in 1214, and John used the castle as his base during the negotiations before the signing of Magna Carta at nearby Runnymede in 1215. In 1216 the castle was besieged again by baronial and French troops under the command of the Count of Nevers, but John's constable, Engelard de Cigogné, successfully defended it. The damage done to the castle during the second siege was immediately repaired in 1216 and 1221 by Cigogné on behalf of John's successor Henry III, who further strengthened the defences. The walls of the Lower Ward were rebuilt in stone, complete with a gatehouse in the location of the future Henry VIII Gate, between 1224 and 1230. Three new towers, the Curfew, Garter and the Salisbury towers, were constructed. The Middle Ward was heavily reinforced with a southern stone wall, protected by the new Edward III and Henry III towers at each end. Windsor Castle was one of Henry III's three favourite residences and he invested heavily in the royal accommodation, spending more money at Windsor than in any other of his properties. Following his marriage to Eleanor of Provence, Henry built a luxurious palace in 1240–1263, based around a court along the north side of the Upper Ward. This was intended primarily for the queen and Henry's children. In the Lower Ward, the king ordered the construction of a range of buildings for his own use along the south wall, including a 70 ft (21 m) long chapel, later called the Lady Chapel. This was the grandest of the numerous chapels built for his own use, and comparable to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris in size and quality. Henry repaired the Great Hall that lay along the north side of the Lower Ward, and enlarged it with a new kitchen and built a covered walkway between the Hall and the kitchen. Henry's work was characterised by the religious overtones of the rich decorations, which formed "one of the high-water marks of English medieval art". The conversion cost more than £10,000. The result was to create a division in the castle between a more private Upper Ward and a Lower Ward devoted to the public face of the monarchy. Little further building was carried out at the castle during the 13th century; the Great Hall in the Lower Ward was destroyed by fire in 1296, but it was not rebuilt. ### 14th century Edward III was born at Windsor Castle and used it extensively throughout his reign. In 1344 the king announced the foundation of the new Order of the Round Table at the castle. Edward began to construct a new building in the castle to host this order, but it was never finished. Chroniclers described it as a round building, 200 ft (61 m) across, and it was probably in the centre of the Upper Ward. Shortly afterwards, Edward abandoned the new order for reasons that remain unclear, and instead established the Order of the Garter, again with Windsor Castle as its headquarters, complete with the attendant Poor Knights of Windsor. As part of this process Edward decided to rebuild Windsor Castle, in particular Henry III's palace, in an attempt to construct a castle that would be symbolic of royal power and chivalry. Edward was influenced both by the military successes of his grandfather, Edward I, and by the decline of royal authority under his father, Edward II, and aimed to produce an innovative, "self-consciously aesthetic, muscled, martial architecture". Edward placed William of Wykeham in overall charge of the rebuilding and design of the new castle and whilst work was ongoing Edward stayed in temporary accommodation in the Round Tower. Between 1350 and 1377 Edward spent £51,000 on renovating Windsor Castle; this was the largest amount spent by any English medieval monarch on a single building operation, and over one and a half times Edward's typical annual income of £30,000. Some of the costs of the castle were paid from the results of ransoms following Edward's victories at the battles of Crécy, Calais and Poitiers. Windsor Castle was already a substantial building before Edward began expanding it, making the investment all the more impressive, and much of the expenditure was lavished on rich furnishings. The castle was "the most expensive secular building project of the entire Middle Ages in England". Edward's new palace consisted of three courts along the north side of the Upper Ward, called Little Cloister, King's Cloister and the Kitchen Court. At the front of the palace lay the St George's Hall range, which combined a new hall and a new chapel. This range had two symmetrical gatehouses, the Spicerie Gatehouse and the Kitchen Gatehouse. The Spicerie Gatehouse was the main entrance into the palace, whilst the Kitchen Gatehouse simply led into the kitchen courtyard. The great hall had numerous large windows looking out across the ward. The range had an unusual, unified roof-line and, with a taller roof than the rest of the palace, would have been highly distinctive. The Rose Tower, designed for the king's private use, set off the west corner of the range. The result was a "great and apparently architecturally unified palace ... uniform in all sorts of ways, as to roof line, window heights, cornice line, floor and ceiling heights". With the exception of the Hall, Chapel and the Great Chamber, the new interiors all shared a similar height and width. The defensive features, however, were primarily for show, possibly to provide a backdrop for jousting between the two-halves of the Order of the Garter. Edward built further luxurious, self-contained lodgings for his court around the east and south edges of the Upper Ward, creating the modern shape of the quadrangle. The Norman gate was built to secure the west entrance to the Ward. In the Lower Ward, the chapel was enlarged and remodelled with grand buildings for the canons built alongside. The earliest weight-driven mechanical clock in England was installed by Edward III in the Round Tower in 1354. William of Wykeham went on to build New College, Oxford and Winchester College, where the influence of Windsor Castle can easily be seen. The new castle was used to hold French prisoners taken at the Battle of Poitiers in 1357, including King John II, who was held for a considerable ransom. Later in the century, the castle also found favour with Richard II. Richard conducted restoration work on St George's Chapel, the work being carried out by Geoffrey Chaucer, who served as a diplomat and Clerk of The King's Works. ### 15th century Windsor Castle continued to be favoured by monarchs in the 15th century, despite increasing political violence. Henry IV seized the castle during his coup in 1399, although failing to catch Richard II, who had escaped to London. Under Henry V, the castle hosted a visit from the Holy Roman Emperor in 1417, a massive diplomatic event that stretched the castle's accommodation to its limits. By the middle of the 15th century England was increasingly divided between the rival royal factions of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. Castles such as Windsor did not play a decisive role during the resulting Wars of the Roses (1455–1485), which were fought primarily in the form of pitched battles between the rival factions. Henry VI, born at Windsor Castle and known as Henry of Windsor, became king at the young age of nine months. His long period of minority, coupled with the increasing tensions between Henry's Lancastrian supporters and the Yorkists, distracted attention from Windsor. The Garter Feasts and other ceremonial activities at the castle became more infrequent and less well attended. Edward IV seized power in 1461. When Edward captured Henry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, she was brought back to be detained at the castle. Edward began to revive the Order of the Garter, and held a particularly lavish feast in 1472. Edward began the construction of the present St. George's Chapel in 1475, resulting in the dismantling of several of the older buildings in the Lower Ward. By building the grand chapel Edward was seeking to show that his new dynasty were the permanent rulers of England, and may also have been attempting to deliberately rival the similar chapel that Henry VI had ordered to be constructed at nearby Eton College. Richard III made only a brief use of Windsor Castle before his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, but had the body of Henry VI moved from Chertsey Abbey in Surrey to the castle to allow it to be visited by pilgrims more easily. Henry VII made more use of Windsor. In 1488, shortly after succeeding to the throne, he held a massive feast for the Order of the Garter at the castle. He completed the roof of St George's Chapel, and set about converting the older eastern Lady Chapel into a proposed shrine to Henry VI, whose canonisation was then considered imminent. In the event, Henry VI was not canonised and the project was abandoned, although the shrine continued to attract a flood of pilgrims. Henry VII appears to have remodelled the King's Chamber in the palace, and had the roof of the Great Kitchen rebuilt in 1489. He also built a three-storied tower on the west end of the palace, which he used for his personal apartments. Windsor began to be used for international diplomatic events, including the grand visit of Philip I of Castile in 1506. William de la Pole, one of the surviving Yorkist claimants to the throne, was imprisoned at Windsor Castle during Henry's reign, before his execution in 1513. ### 16th century Henry VIII enjoyed Windsor Castle, as a young man "exercising himself daily in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar, playing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songs and making of ballads". The tradition of the Garter Feasts was maintained and became more extravagant; the size of the royal retinue visiting Windsor had to be restricted because of the growing numbers. During the Pilgrimage of Grace, a huge uprising in the north of England against Henry's rule in 1536, the king used Windsor as a secure base in the south from which to manage his military response. Throughout the Tudor period, Windsor was also used as a safe retreat in the event of plagues occurring in London. Henry rebuilt the principal castle gateway in about 1510 and constructed a tennis court at the base of the motte in the Upper Ward. He also built a long terrace, called the North Wharf, along the outside wall of the Upper Ward; constructed of wood, it was designed to provide a commanding view of the River Thames below. The design included an outside staircase into the king's apartments, which made the monarch's life more comfortable at the expense of considerably weakening the castle's defences. Early in his reign, Henry had given the eastern Lady Chapel to Cardinal Wolsey for Wolsey's future mausoleum. Benedetto Grazzini converted much of this into an Italian Renaissance design, before Wolsey's fall from power brought an end to the project, with contemporaries estimating that around £60,000 (£295 million in 2008 terms) had been spent on the work. Henry continued the project, but it remained unfinished when he himself was buried in the chapel, in an elaborate funeral in 1547. By contrast, the young Edward VI disliked Windsor Castle. Edward's Protestant beliefs led him to simplify the Garter ceremonies, to discontinue the annual Feast of the Garter at Windsor and to remove any signs of Catholic practices with the Order. During the rebellions and political strife of 1549, Windsor was again used as a safe-haven for the king and the Duke of Somerset. Edward famously commented whilst staying at Windsor Castle during this period that "Methink I am in a prison, here are no galleries, nor no gardens to walk in". Under both Edward and his sister, Mary I, some limited building work continued at the castle, in many cases using resources recovered from the English abbeys. Water was piped into the Upper Ward to create a fountain. Mary also expanded the buildings used by the Knights of Windsor in the Lower Ward, using stone from Reading Abbey. Elizabeth I spent much of her time at Windsor Castle and used it a safe haven in crises, "knowing it could stand a siege if need be". Ten new brass cannons were purchased for the castle's defence. It became one of her favourite locations and she spent more money on the property than on any of her other palaces. She conducted some modest building works at Windsor, including a wide range of repairs to the existing structures. She converted the North Wharf into a permanent, huge stone terrace, complete with statues, carvings and an octagonal, outdoor banqueting house, raising the western end of the terrace to provide more privacy. The chapel was refitted with stalls, a gallery and a new ceiling. A bridge was built over the ditch to the south of the castle to enable easier access to the park. Elizabeth built a gallery range of buildings on the west end of the Upper Ward, alongside Henry VII's tower. Elizabeth increasingly used the castle for diplomatic engagements, but space continued to prove a challenge as the property was simply not as large as the more modern royal palaces. This flow of foreign visitors was captured for the queen's entertainment in William Shakespeare's play, The Merry Wives of Windsor. ### 17th century James I used Windsor Castle primarily as a base for hunting, one of his favourite pursuits, and for socialising with his friends. Many of these occasions involved extensive drinking sessions, including one with Christian IV of Denmark in 1606 that became infamous across Europe for the resulting drunken behaviour of the two kings. The absence of space at Windsor continued to prove problematic, with James' English and Scottish retinues often quarrelling over rooms. Charles I was a connoisseur of art, and paid greater attention to the aesthetic aspects of Windsor Castle than his predecessors. Charles had the castle completely surveyed by a team including Inigo Jones in 1629, but little of the recommended work was carried out. Nonetheless, Charles employed Nicholas Stone to improve the chapel gallery in the Mannerist style and to construct a gateway in the North Terrace. Christian van Vianen, a noted Dutch goldsmith, was employed to produce a baroque gold service for the St George's Chapel altar. In the final years of peace, Charles demolished the fountain in the Upper Ward, intending to replace it with a classical statue. In 1642 the English Civil War broke out, dividing the country into the Royalist supporters of Charles, and the Parliamentarians. In the aftermath of the battle of Edgehill in October, Parliament became concerned that Charles might advance on London. John Venn took control of Windsor Castle with twelve companies of foot soldiers to protect the route along the Thames river, becoming the governor of the castle for the duration of the war. The contents of St George's Chapel were both valuable and, to many Parliamentary forces, inappropriately high church in style. Looting began immediately: Edward IV's bejewelled coat of mail was stolen; the chapel's organs, windows and books destroyed; the Lady Chapel was emptied of valuables, including the component parts of Henry VIII's unfinished tomb. By the end of the war, some 3,580 ounces (101 kg) of gold and silver plate had been looted. Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a prominent Royalist general, attempted to relieve Windsor Castle that November. Rupert's small force of cavalry was able to take the town of Windsor, but was unable to overcome the walls at Windsor Castle – in due course, Rupert was forced to retreat. Over the winter of 1642–1643, Windsor Castle was converted into the headquarters for the Earl of Essex, a senior Parliamentary general. The Horseshoe Cloister was taken over as a prison for captured Royalists, and the resident canons were expelled from the castle. The Lady Chapel was turned into a magazine. Looting by the underpaid garrison continued to be a problem; 500 royal deer were killed across the Windsor Great Park during the winter, and fences were burned as firewood. In 1647 Charles, then a prisoner of Parliament, was brought to the castle for a period under arrest, before being moved to Hampton Court. In 1648 there was a Royalist plan, never enacted, to seize Windsor Castle. The Parliamentary Army Council moved into Windsor in November and decided to try Charles for treason. Charles was held at Windsor again for the last three weeks of his reign; after his execution in January 1649, his body was taken back to Windsor that night through a snowstorm, to be interred without ceremony in the vault beneath St George's Chapel. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 saw the first period of significant change to Windsor Castle for many years. The civil war and the years of the Interregnum had caused extensive damage to the royal palaces in England. At the same time the shifting "functional requirements, patterns of movement, modes of transport, aesthetic taste and standards of comfort" amongst royal circles was changing the qualities being sought in a successful palace. Windsor was the only royal palace to be successfully fully modernised by Charles II in the Restoration years. During the Interregnum, however, squatters had occupied Windsor Castle. As a result, the "King's house was a wreck; the fanatic, the pilferer, and the squatter, having been at work ... Paupers had squatted in many of the towers and cabinets". Shortly after returning to England, Charles appointed Prince Rupert, one of his few surviving close relatives, to be the Constable of Windsor Castle in 1668. Rupert immediately began to reorder the castle's defences, repairing the Round Tower and reconstructing the real tennis court. Charles attempted to restock Windsor Great Park with deer brought over from Germany, but the herds never recovered their pre-war size. Rupert created apartments for himself in the Round Tower, decorated with an "extraordinary" number of weapons and armour, with his inner chambers "hung with tapisserie, curious and effeminate pictures". Charles was heavily influenced by Louis XIV style and imitated French design at his palace at Winchester and the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. At Windsor, Charles created "the most extravagantly Baroque interiors ever executed in England". Much of the building work was paid for out of increased royal revenues from Ireland during the 1670s. French court etiquette at the time required a substantial number of enfiladed rooms to satisfy court protocol; the demand for space forced architect Hugh May to expand out into the North Terrace, rebuilding and widening it in the process. This new building was called the Star Building, because Charles II placed a huge gilt Garter star on the side of it. May took down and rebuilt the walls of Edward III's hall and chapel, incorporating larger windows but retaining the height and dimensions of the medieval building. Although Windsor Castle was now big enough to hold the entire court, it was not built with chambers for the King's Council, as would be found in Whitehall. Instead Charles took advantage of the good road links emerging around Windsor to hold his council meetings at Hampton Court when he was staying at the castle. The result became an "exemplar" for royal buildings for the next twenty-five years. The result of May's work showed a medievalist leaning; although sometimes criticised for its "dullness", May's reconstruction was both sympathetic to the existing castle and a deliberate attempt to create a slightly austere 17th-century version of a "neo-Norman" castle. William III commissioned Nicholas Hawksmoor and Sir Christopher Wren to conduct a large, final classical remodelling of the Upper Ward, but the king's early death caused the plan to be cancelled. Queen Anne was fond of the castle, and attempted to address the lack of a formal garden by instructing Henry Wise to begin work on the Maestricht Garden beneath the North Terrace, which was never completed. Anne also created the racecourse at Ascot and began the tradition of the annual Royal Ascot procession from the castle. ### 18th century George I took little interest in Windsor Castle, preferring his other palaces at St James's, Hampton Court and Kensington. George II rarely used Windsor either, preferring Hampton Court. Many of the apartments in the Upper Ward were given out as "grace and favour" privileges for the use of prominent widows or other friends of the Crown. The Duke of Cumberland made the most use of the property in his role as the Ranger of Windsor Great Park. By the 1740s, Windsor Castle had become an early tourist attraction; wealthier visitors who could afford to pay the castle keeper could enter, see curiosities such as the castle's narwhal horn, and by the 1750s buy the first guidebooks to Windsor, produced by George Bickham in 1753 and Joseph Pote in 1755. As the condition of the State Apartments continued to deteriorate, even the general public were able to regularly visit the property. George III reversed this trend when he came to the throne in 1760. George disliked Hampton Court and was attracted by the park at Windsor Castle. George wanted to move into the Ranger's House by the castle, but his brother, Henry was already living in it and refused to move out. Instead, George had to move into the Upper Lodge, later called the Queen's Lodge, and started the long process of renovating the castle and the surrounding parks. Initially the atmosphere at the castle remained very informal, with local children playing games inside the Upper and Lower Wards, and the royal family frequently seen as they walked around the grounds. As time went by, however, access for visitors became more limited. George's architectural taste shifted over the years. As a young man, he favoured Classical, in particular Palladian styles, but the king came to favour a more Gothic style, both as a consequence of the Palladian style becoming overused and poorly implemented, and because the Gothic form had come to be seen as a more honest, national style of English design in the light of the French revolution. Working with the architect James Wyatt, George attempted to "transform the exterior of the buildings in the Upper Ward into a Gothic palace, while retaining the character of the Hugh May state rooms". The outside of the building was restyled with Gothic features, including new battlements and turrets. Inside, conservation work was undertaken, and several new rooms constructed, including a new Gothic staircase to replace May's 17th-century version, complete with the Grand Vestibule ceiling above it. New paintings were purchased for the castle, and collections from other royal palaces moved there by the king. The cost of the work came to over £150,000 (£100 million in 2008 terms). The king undertook extensive work in the castle's Great Park as well, laying out the new Norfolk and Flemish farms, creating two dairies and restoring Virginia Water Lake, and its grotto and follies. At the end of this period Windsor Castle became a place of royal confinement. In 1788 the king first became ill during a dinner at Windsor Castle; diagnosed as suffering from madness, he was removed for a period to the White House at Kew, where he temporarily recovered. After relapses in 1801 and 1804, his condition became enduring from 1810 onwards and he was confined in the State Apartments of Windsor Castle, with building work on the castle ceasing the following year. ### 19th century George IV came to the throne in 1820 intending to create a set of royal palaces that reflected his wealth and influence as the ruler of an increasingly powerful Britain. George's previous houses, Carlton House and the Brighton Pavilion were too small for grand court events, even after expensive extensions. George expanded the Royal Lodge in the castle park whilst he was Prince Regent, and then began a programme of work to modernise the castle itself once he became king. George persuaded Parliament to vote him £300,000 for restoration (£245 million in 2008 terms). Under the guidance of George's advisor, Charles Long, the architect Jeffry Wyatville was selected, and work commenced in 1824. Wyatville's own preference ran to Gothic architecture, but George, who had led the reintroduction of the French Rococo style to England at Carlton House, preferred a blend of periods and styles, and applied this taste to Windsor. The terraces were closed off to visitors for greater privacy and the exterior of the Upper Ward was completely remodelled into its current appearance. The Round Tower was raised in height to create a more dramatic appearance; many of the rooms in the State Apartments were rebuilt or remodelled; numerous new towers were created, much higher than the older versions. The south range of the ward was rebuilt to provide private accommodation for the king, away from the state rooms. The statue of Charles II was moved from the centre of the Upper Ward to the base of the motte. Sir Walter Scott captured contemporary views when he noted that the work showed "a great deal of taste and feeling for the Gothic architecture"; many modern commentators, including Prince Charles, have criticised Wyatville's work as representing an act of vandalism of May's earlier designs. The work was unfinished at the time of George IV's death in 1830, but was broadly completed by Wyatville's death in 1840. The total expenditure on the castle had soared to the colossal sum of over one million pounds (£817 million in 2008 terms) by the end of the project. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made Windsor Castle their principal royal residence, despite Victoria complaining early in her reign that the castle was "dull and tiresome" and "prison-like", and preferring Osborne and Balmoral as holiday residences. The growth of the British Empire and Victoria's close dynastic ties to Europe made Windsor the hub for many diplomatic and state visits, assisted by the new railways and steamships of the period. Indeed, it has been argued that Windsor reached its social peak during the Victorian era, seeing the introduction of invitations to numerous prominent figures to "dine and sleep" at the castle. Victoria took a close interest in the details of how Windsor Castle was run, including the minutiae of the social events. Few visitors found these occasions comfortable, both due to the design of the castle and the excessive royal formality. Prince Albert died in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle in 1861 and was buried in the Royal Mausoleum built at nearby Frogmore, within the Home Park. The prince's rooms were maintained exactly as they had been at the moment of his death and Victoria kept the castle in a state of mourning for many years, becoming known as the "Widow of Windsor", a phrase popularised in the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling. The Queen shunned the use of Buckingham Palace after Albert's death and instead used Windsor Castle as her residence when conducting official business near London. Towards the end of her reign, plays, operas, and other entertainments slowly began to be held at the castle again, accommodating both the Queen's desire for entertainment and her reluctance to be seen in public. Several minor alterations were made to the Upper Ward under Victoria. Anthony Salvin rebuilt Wyatville's grand staircase, with Edward Blore constructing a new private chapel within the State Apartments. Salvin also rebuilt the State Dining Room following a serious fire in 1853. Ludwig Gruner assisted in the design of the Queen's Private Audience Chamber in the south range. Blore and Salvin also did extensive work in the Lower Ward, under the direction of Prince Albert, including the Hundred Steps leading down into Windsor town, rebuilding the Garter, Curfew and Salisbury towers, the houses of the Military Knights and creating a new Guardhouse. George Gilbert Scott rebuilt the Horseshoe Cloister in the 1870s. The Norman Gatehouse was turned into a private dwelling for Sir Henry Ponsonby. Windsor Castle did not benefit from many of the minor improvements of the era, however, as Victoria disliked gaslight, preferring candles; electric lighting was only installed in limited parts of the castle at the end of her reign. Indeed, the castle was famously cold and draughty in Victoria's reign, but it was connected to a nearby reservoir, with water reliably piped into the interior for the first time. Many of the changes under Victoria were to the surrounding parklands and buildings. The Royal Dairy at Frogmore was rebuilt in a mock Tudor style in 1853; George III's Dairy rebuilt in a Renaissance style in 1859; the Georgian Flemish Farm rebuilt, and the Norfolk Farm renovated. The Long Walk was planted with fresh trees to replace the diseased stock. The Windsor Castle and Town Approaches Act, passed by Parliament in 1848, permitted the closing and re-routing of the old roads which previously ran through the park from Windsor to Datchet and Old Windsor. These changes allowed the royal family to undertake the enclosure of a large area of parkland to form the private "Home Park" with no public roads passing through it. The Queen granted additional rights for public access to the remainder of the park as part of this arrangement. ### 20th century Edward VII came to the throne in 1901 and immediately set about modernising Windsor Castle with "enthusiasm and zest". Many of the rooms in the Upper Ward were de-cluttered and redecorated for the first time in many years, with Edward "peering into cabinets; ransacking drawers; clearing rooms formerly used by the Prince Consort and not touched since his death; dispatching case-loads of relics and ornaments to a special room in the Round Tower ... destroying statues and busts of John Brown ... throwing out hundreds of 'rubbishy old coloured photographs' ... [and] rearranging pictures". Electric lighting was added to more rooms, along with central heating; telephone lines were installed, along with garages for the newly invented automobiles. The marathon was run from Windsor Castle at the 1908 Olympics, and in 1911 the pioneering aviator Thomas Sopwith landed an aircraft at the castle for the first time. George V continued a process of more gradual modernisation, assisted by his wife, Mary of Teck, who had a strong interest in furniture and decoration. Mary sought out and re-acquired items of furniture that had been lost or sold from the castle, including many dispersed by Edward VII, and also acquired many new works of art to furnish the state rooms. Queen Mary was also a lover of all things miniature, and a famous dolls' house was created for her at Windsor Castle, designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens and furnished by leading craftsmen and designers of the 1930s. George V was committed to maintaining a high standard of court life at Windsor Castle, adopting the motto that everything was to be "of the best". A large staff was still kept at the castle, with around 660 servants working in the property during the period. Meanwhile, during the First World War, anti-German feeling led the members of the royal family to change their dynastic name from the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; George decided to take the new name from the castle, and the royal family became the House of Windsor in 1917. Edward VIII did not spend much of his reign at Windsor Castle. He continued to spend most of his time at Fort Belvedere in the Great Park, where he had lived whilst Prince of Wales. Edward created a small aerodrome at the castle on Smith's Lawn, now used as a golf-course. Edward's reign was short-lived and he broadcast his abdication speech to the British Empire from the castle in December 1936, adopting the title of Duke of Windsor. His successor, George VI also preferred his own original home, the Royal Lodge in the Great Park, but moved into Windsor Castle with his wife Elizabeth. As king, George revived the annual Garter Service at Windsor, drawing on the accounts of the 17th-century ceremonies recorded by Elias Ashmole, but moving the event to Ascot Week in June. On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 the castle was readied for war-time conditions. Many of the staff from Buckingham Palace were moved to Windsor for safety, security was tightened and windows were blacked-out. There was significant concern that the castle might be damaged or destroyed during the war; the more important art works were removed from the castle for safe-keeping, the valuable chandeliers were lowered to the floor in case of bomb damage, and a sequence of paintings by John Piper were commissioned from 1942 to 1944 to record the castle's appearance. The king and queen and their children Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret lived for safety in the castle, with the roof above their rooms specially strengthened in case of attack. The king and queen drove daily to London, returning to Windsor to sleep, although at the time this was a well-kept secret, as for propaganda and morale purposes it was reported that the king was still residing full-time at Buckingham Palace. The castle was also used as a storage facility; for example, the only purified heavy water at the time was rescued from France in the face of the imminent French defeat in 1940, and most of it was sent to the castle to be stored in the basement alongside the Crown Jewels. After the war the king revived the "dine and sleep" events at Windsor, following comments that the castle had become "almost like a vast, empty museum"; nonetheless, it took many years to restore Windsor Castle to its pre-war condition. In February 1952, Elizabeth II came to the throne and decided to make Windsor her principal weekend retreat. The private apartments which had not been properly occupied since the era of Queen Mary were renovated and further modernised, and the Queen, Prince Philip and their two children took up residence. By the early 1990s, however, there had been a marked deterioration in the quality of the Upper Ward, in particular the State Apartments. Generations of repairs and replacements had resulted in a "diminution of the richness with which they had first been decorated", a "gradual attrition of the original vibrancy of effect, as each change repeated a more faded version of the last". A programme of repair work to replace the heating and the wiring of the Upper Ward began in 1988. Work was also undertaken to underpin the motte of the Round Tower after fresh subsidence was detected in 1988, threatening the collapse of the tower. #### 1992 fire On 20 November 1992, a major fire occurred at Windsor Castle, lasting for 15 hours and causing widespread damage to the Upper Ward. The Private Chapel in the north-east corner of the State Apartments was being renovated as part of a long term programme of work within the castle, and it is believed that one of the spotlights being used in the work set fire to a curtain by the altar during the morning. The fire spread quickly and destroyed nine of the principal state rooms and severely damaged more than 100 others. Fire-fighters applied water to contain the blaze, whilst castle staff attempted to rescue the precious artworks from the castle. Many of the rooms closest to the fire had been emptied as part of the renovation work, and this contributed to the successful evacuation of most of the collection. The fire spread through the roof voids and efforts continued through the night to contain the blaze, at great risk to the 200 fire-fighters involved. It was not until late afternoon that the blaze began to come under control, although the fire continued during the night before being officially declared extinguished the next morning. Along with the fire and smoke damage, one of the unintended effects of the fire-fighting was the considerable water damage to the castle; more than 1.5 million gallons of water were used to extinguish it, which in many ways caused more complex restoration problems than the fire. Two major issues for Windsor Castle emerged following the fire. The first was a political debate in Britain as to who should pay for the repairs. Traditionally, as the property of the Crown, Windsor Castle was maintained, and if necessary repaired, by the British government in exchange for the profits made by the Crown Estate. Furthermore, like other occupied royal palaces, it was not insured on grounds of economy. At the time of the fire, however, the British press strongly argued in favour of the Queen herself being required to pay for the repairs from her private income. A solution was found in which the restoration work would be paid for by opening Buckingham Palace to the public at selected times of the year, and by introducing new charges for public access to the parkland surrounding Windsor. The second major issue concerned how to repair the castle. Some suggested that the damaged rooms should be restored to their original appearance, but others favoured repairing the castle so as to incorporate modern designs. The decision was taken to largely follow the pre-fire architecture with some changes to reflect modern tastes and cost, but fresh questions emerged over whether the restoration should be undertaken to "authentic" or "equivalent" restoration standards. Modern methods were used at Windsor to reproduce the equivalent pre-fire appearance, partially due to the cost. The restoration programme was completed in 1997 at a total cost of £37 million (£67 million in 2015 terms). ### 21st century Windsor Castle, part of the Occupied Royal Palaces Estate, is owned by Charles III in right of the Crown, and day-to-day management is by the Royal Household. In terms of population, Windsor Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and the longest-occupied palace in Europe, but it also remains a functioning royal home. As of 2006, around 500 people were living and working in the castle. The Queen had increasingly used the castle as a royal palace as well as her weekend home before her death. In recent years, Windsor Castle has hosted visits from President Mbeki of South Africa, King Abdullah II of Jordan and presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden of the United States. The castle remains an important ceremonial location. The Waterloo ceremony is carried out in the presence of the monarch each year, and the annual ceremony of the Order of the Garter takes place in St George's Chapel. When the Queen was in residence, the Guard Mounting ceremony occurred on a daily basis. The Royal Ascot procession leaves the castle each year during the annual meeting. During Elizabeth II's reign much was done, not only to restore and maintain the fabric of the building, but also to transform it into a major British tourist attraction, containing a significant portion of the Royal Collection of art. Archaeological work at the castle has continued, following on from limited investigations in the 1970s, the work on the Round Tower from 1988 to 1992 and the investigations following the 1992 fire. During 2007, 993,000 tourists visited the castle. This has had to be achieved in co-ordination with security issues and the castle's role as a working royal palace. In late 2011 two large water turbines were installed upstream of the castle on the River Thames to provide hydroelectric power to the castle and the surrounding estate. In April 2016, the Royal Collection Trust announced a £27m project to reinstate the original entrance hall of the castle to visitors, as well as a new café in the 14th-century undercroft. The new entrance was opened at the end of 2019. From March 2020, the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, shielded at Windsor during the COVID-19 pandemic with a small staff in what became known as 'HMS Bubble' – a jocular reference to the UK Government's rules on household support 'bubbles' during the pandemic. The pandemic also meant that they celebrated Christmas at Windsor Castle rather than Sandringham House for the first time since 1987. Prince Philip died at Windsor Castle on 9 April 2021. On Christmas Day 2021, while Queen Elizabeth was staying at Windsor Castle, 19-year-old Jaswant Singh Chail broke into the gardens using a rope ladder and carrying a crossbow. Before he could enter any buildings Chail was arrested and later sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He had posted a video on the internet threatening to assassinate the Queen. Chail later admitted that his aim was to take revenge for the Amritsar massacre of 1919. He pleaded guilty to charges under section two of the Treason Act 1842. On 7 May 2023 the East Lawn of the castle was the venue for the Coronation Concert, in celebration of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. It was the first open air concert to be staged at the castle and included performances by Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, Andrea Bocelli, Sir Bryn Terfel, Take That and Paloma Faith. The concert was attended by members of the royal family, alongside an audience of 20,000 members of the public. ## See also - Constables and Governors of Windsor Castle - The Society of the Friends of St George's and Descendants of the Knights of the Garter - Windsor Festival International String Competition

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

2004 novel by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the debut novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. Published in 2004, it is an alternative history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Its premise is that magic once existed in England and has returned with two men: Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange. Centred on the relationship between these two men, the novel investigates the nature of "Englishness" and the boundaries between reason and unreason, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Dane, and Northern and Southern English cultural tropes/stereotypes. It has been described as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, and a historical novel. It inverts the Industrial Revolution conception of the North–South divide in England: in this book the North is romantic and magical, rather than rational and concrete. The narrative draws on various Romantic literary traditions, such as the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, and the Byronic hero. The novel's language is a pastiche of 19th-century writing styles, such as those of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Clarke describes the supernatural with careful detail. She supplements the text with almost 200 footnotes, outlining the backstory and an entire fictional corpus of magical scholarship. Clarke began writing Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in 1992; ten years later she submitted the manuscript for publication. It was accepted by Bloomsbury and published in September 2004, with illustrations by Portia Rosenberg. Bloomsbury were so sure of its success that they printed 250,000 hardcover copies. The novel was well received by critics and reached number three on the New York Times best-seller list. It was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel. ## Plot summary ### Volume I: Mr Norrell The novel opens in 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, whose members are "theoretical magicians" who study magical texts and history, after the decline of magic in England several hundred years earlier. The group is stunned to learn of a "practical magician", Mr Gilbert Norrell. Norrell proves his skill as a magician by making the statues in York Cathedral speak, thereafter compelling the society to disband. John Childermass, Mr Norrell's servant, convinces a member of the group, John Segundus, to write about the event for the London newspapers. Segundus's article generates interest in Mr Norrell, who moves to London to revive practical English magic. He enters society with the help of two gentlemen about town, the superficial Christopher Drawlight and the shrewd Henry Lascelles, and meets a Cabinet Minister, Sir Walter Pole. To ingratiate himself, Mr Norrell attempts to recall Sir Walter's fiancée, Emma Wintertowne, from the dead. He summons a fairy—"the gentleman with thistle-down hair"—who strikes a bargain with Norrell to restore Emma: half of her life will be spent with the fairy. After news spreads of Emma's resurrection and happy marriage to Sir Walter, magic becomes respected, and the government seeks Norrell's aid their ongoing war against Napoleon. While living in London, Norrell encounters Vinculus, a street-magician, who relates a prophecy about a "nameless slave" and two magicians in England, but Norrell dismisses it and has Vinculus banished. While travelling, Vinculus later meets Jonathan Strange and recites the same prophecy, prompting Strange to become a magician. Meanwhile, the gentleman with thistle-down hair takes a liking to Stephen Black, Sir Walter's butler, and promises to make him a king. Emma (now Lady Pole) lapses into lassitude; she rarely speaks and is distraught by music and parties. Each night she and Stephen are forced to attend balls held by the gentleman with thistle-down hair in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long; their attempts to communicate their situation are confounded by magic. ### Volume II: Jonathan Strange In 1809, Strange learns of Mr Norrell and travels to London to meet him. They immediately clash over the importance of John Uskglass (the legendary Raven King) to English magic. Strange argues that "without the Raven King there would be no magic and no magicians" while Norrell retorts that the Raven King abandoned England and should be forgotten. Despite their differing opinions and temperaments, Norrell acknowledges Strange's magical ability and takes him on as a pupil, but deliberately keeps some knowledge from him. The Stranges become a popular couple in London. Lady Pole and Strange's wife, Arabella, become friends; during a visit, Arabella meets the gentleman with thistle-down hair, whom she assumes is a relative. The Cabinet ministers find Strange easier to deal with than Norrell, so they send him to assist the Duke of Wellington on his Peninsular Campaign. For over a year, Strange helps the army: he creates roads, moves towns, and makes dead men speak. After he returns, he fails to cure George III's madness, but manages to save him from the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who is determined to make Stephen a king. Strange then helps defeat Napoleon at the horrific Battle of Waterloo. Upon returning to England, Strange finds that Drawlight has been stealing money from English citizens with prospects of fulfilling their wishes through Strange's magic. Drawlight's schemes are publicized and he is arrested. Norrell strongly wishes for him to be hanged for magic-related crimes, but has insufficient political influence. Lascelles becomes closer to Norrell, challenging the relationship between Childermass and his master. Frustrated with being Norrell's pupil, Strange pens a scathing review of a book outlining Norrell's theories on modern magic; in particular, Strange challenges Norrell's views of the Raven King. The English public splits into "Norrellites" and "Strangites". Norrell confides to Strange that he wasted years attempting to summon the Raven King, but Strange disagrees that the effort is futile; the two part company, although not without regret. Strange returns home and works on his own book, The History and Practice of English Magic. Arabella goes missing, then suddenly reappears, sick and weak. Three days later she dies. ### Volume III: John Uskglass In 1816, Lady Pole attempts to shoot Mr Norrell. Childermass takes the bullet himself but is not killed. Lady Pole is sent to the countryside and cared for by John Segundus, who has an inkling of the magic surrounding her. During travels in the north, Stephen meets Vinculus, who recites his prophecy: "the nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country ..." Stephen believes it applies to him, but the gentleman with thistle-down hair argues that it applies to the Raven King. Strange travels to Venice and meets Flora Greysteel. They become fond of each other and Strange's friends believe he may marry again. However, after experimenting with dangerous magic that threatens his sanity to gain access to the Faerie kingdom, he discovers that Arabella is alive and being held captive alongside Lady Pole in Lost-Hope; he realizes the bargain Norrell struck with the fairy. The gentleman with thistle-down hair curses Strange with an Impenetrable Darkness, a pillar of darkness that engulfs him and follows him wherever he goes. Thereafter, Strange's strenuous efforts to rescue Arabella take their toll: his letters to his friends appear crazed and his public reputation suffers. At Strange's request, Flora moves with her family to Padua and secludes herself, along with a mirror given to her by Strange. Drawlight is sent by Lascelles and Norrell to Venice to find out more about Strange's activities and Strange magically brings Drawlight before him. Strange instructs him to deliver messages to Norrell, Childermass and the magical community within England before dismissing him. Strange then re-invokes the old alliances that exist in England between the forces of nature and John Uskglass. This sparks a magical renaissance, reopening roads to Faerie and causing many to spontaneously perform magic, but Norrell fails to grasp its significance. Drawlight attempts to deliver the messages but is intercepted by Lascelles, who murders him, as Norrell learning the truth would damage Lascelles' control over Norrell. Strange, bringing the Darkness with him, asks Norrell to help him undo Arabella's enchantment by summoning John Uskglass. Childermass explores a corner of Faerie and stumbles upon a castle where he is challenged to a duel by its guardian; he declines the duel. Lascelles challenges the guardian himself, wishing to preserve English honour, and succeeds in killing him, but is magically entrapped into the position of the guardian himself. Meanwhile, Childermass eventually receives the message meant for him by Strange; he and Segundus use magic to break the enchantment over Lady Pole. Enraged by this, the gentleman with thistle-down hair intends to place a second deadly curse on Lady Pole, as Faerie tradition demands. En route, he murders Vinculus after they encounter him, with Stephen Black forced to watch. During these events, Norrell and Strange attempt a spell that would cause the natural forces of England to pay homage to John Uskglass. Not knowing his true name, they dedicate it to the "nameless slave". However, instead the power is vested in Stephen, who uses his momentary control of all of English magic to destroy the man with thistle-down hair. Then, leaving England forever by one of the Faerie roads, Stephen sheds his name and becomes the new king of the now-blossoming Lost-Hope. Childermass discovers Vinculus's body and notes that it is tattooed with the last work of John Uskglass. A man appears; he calls Childermass his servant, though Childermass does not recognize him, then brings Vinculus back to life and performs other feats of magic with ease. The mysterious man, heavily implied to be John Uskglass himself, then disappears, removing Childermass's and Vinculus's memories of the encounter. As a result of the imprecision of the fairy's curse, which was placed on "the English magician", Norrell and his library are trapped along with Strange in the Darkness, and they cannot move more than a certain distance from each other. Upon the gentleman with thistle-down hair's death, Arabella comes through the mirror in Padua, where Flora is waiting for her upon instruction of Strange. Childermass informs The Learned Society of York Magicians that their contract is void, and they can study magic again. He shows the now-restored Vinculus as proof that John Uskglass's book of magic remains, tattooed upon his body. Two months later, Strange has a conversation with Arabella, who is still living in Padua. He explains that he and Norrell are studying magic together and intend to learn to remove the Darkness they are both trapped in, but will adventure into other worlds in the meantime. Neither wishes to take Arabella to Faerie again, so he instead promises to return to her when he has dispelled the darkness and tells her not to be a widow till then, which she agrees to. ## Characters - Gilbert Norrell: England's first "practical magician" in centuries. He keeps a large collection of "books of magic", which he has spent years purchasing to keep out of the hands of others, in his library at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire. - Jonathan Strange: a young gentleman who has recently inherited his father's property in Shropshire, who becomes England's second magician and Mr Norrell's pupil. He marries Arabella Woodhope. - Stephen Black: Sir Walter Pole's butler and the head servant of the Pole household. He is of African descent, born to a woman enslaved on Sir Walter's grandfather's estate in Jamaica. He catches the attention of the gentleman with thistle-down hair. - Emma Wintertowne (Lady Pole): Sir Walter Pole's wife; she is raised from the dead by Norrell with the help of the gentleman with thistle-down hair, who keeps her under an enchantment. - Arabella Woodhope: a young lady who marries Jonathan Strange around the time he begins to practise magic. She befriends Lady Pole, and is later enchanted and stolen away by the gentleman with thistle-down hair. - John Childermass: Mr Norrell's man of business and an important influence on Norrell, opposed to Drawlight and Lascelles; he is also a practical magician, and a devoted follower of the Raven King. - John Segundus: A new member of the York Society, who sets off the events that lead to Norrell's going to London by asking him why no more magic is done in England. - The gentleman with thistle-down hair: a powerful fairy whom Mr Norrell first summons to revive Lady Pole. He is the ruler of several Kingdoms in Faerie, including Lost-Hope, where he hosts balls each night. - Vinculus: A vagabond and street magician; he recites the Raven King's prophecy to Norrell and others. - John Uskglass, the Raven King: Originally an English child kidnapped by fairies, he was King of Northern England from 1110 to 1434 and created English magic. By Vinculus's prophecy he describes the revival of English magic through Norrell and Strange. ## Composition and publication Clarke first developed the idea for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell during a year spent teaching English in Bilbao, Spain: "I had a kind of waking dream ... about a man in 18th-century clothes in a place rather like Venice, talking to some English tourists. And I felt strongly that he had some sort of magical background – he'd been dabbling in magic, and something had gone badly wrong." She had also recently re-read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and afterwards was inspired to "trying writing a novel of magic and fantasy". After she returned from Spain in 1993, Clarke began to think seriously about writing her novel. She signed up for a five-day fantasy and science-fiction writing workshop, co-taught by writers Colin Greenland and Geoff Ryman. The students were expected to prepare a short story before attending, but Clarke only had "bundles" of material for her novel. From this she extracted "The Ladies of Grace Adieu", a story about three women secretly practising magic who are discovered by the famous Jonathan Strange. Greenland was so impressed with the story that, without Clarke's knowledge, he sent an excerpt to his friend, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman. Gaiman later said, "It was terrifying from my point of view to read this first short story that had so much assurance ... It was like watching someone sit down to play the piano for the first time and she plays a sonata." Gaiman showed the story to his friend, science-fiction writer and editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Clarke learned of these events when Nielsen Hayden called and offered to publish her story in his anthology Starlight 1, which featured pieces by well-regarded science-fiction and fantasy writers. She accepted, and the book won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology in 1997. Clarke spent the next ten years working on the novel in her spare time, while editing cookbooks full-time for Simon & Schuster in Cambridge. She also published stories in Starlight 2 and Starlight 3; according to the New York Times Magazine, her work was known and appreciated by a small group of fantasy fans and critics on the internet. She was never sure, however, if she would finish her novel or if it would be published. Clarke tried to write for three hours each day, beginning at 5:30 am, but struggled to keep this schedule. Rather than writing the novel from beginning to end, she wrote in fragments and attempted to stitch them together. Clarke, admitting that the project was for herself and not the reader, "clung to this method" because "I felt that if I went back and started at the beginning, [the novel] would lack depth, and I would just be skimming the surface of what I could do. But if I had known it was going to take me ten years, I would never have begun. I was buoyed up by thinking that I would finish it next year, or the year after next." Clarke and Greenland moved in together while she was writing the novel. Greenland did not read the novel until it was published. Around 2001, Clarke "had begun to despair", and started looking for someone to help her finish and sell the book. Giles Gordon became her agent and sold the unfinished manuscript to Bloomsbury in early 2003, after two publishers rejected it as unmarketable. Bloomsbury were so sure the novel would be a success that they offered Clarke a £1 million advance. They printed 250,000 hardcover copies simultaneously in the United States, Britain, and Germany. Seventeen translations were begun before the first English publication was released. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was first published in the United States on 8 September 2004, in the United Kingdom on 30 September, and in other countries on 4 October. ## Style Clarke's style has frequently been described as a pastiche, particularly of nineteenth-century British writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and George Meredith. Specifically, the novel's minor characters, including sycophants, rakes, and the Duke of Wellington, evoke Dickens' caricatures. Laura Miller, in her review for Salon, suggests that the novel is "about a certain literary voice, the eminently civilized voice of early 19th-century social comedy", exemplified by the works of Austen. The novel uses obsolete spellings—chuse for choose and shewed for showed, for example—to convey this voice as well as the free indirect speech made famous by Austen. Clarke herself notes that Austen's influence is particularly strong in the "domestic scenes, set in living rooms and drawing rooms where people mostly chat about magic" where Dickens's is prominent "any time there's more action or description". While many reviewers compare Clarke's style to that of Austen, Gregory Feeley argues in his review for The Weekly Standard that "the points of resemblance are mostly superficial". He writes that "Austen gets down to business briskly, while Clarke engages in a curious narrative strategy of continual deferral and delay." For example, Clarke mentions Jonathan Strange on the first page of the novel, but only in a footnote. He reappears in other footnotes throughout the opening but does not appear as a character in the text proper until a quarter of the way through the novel. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Clarke infuses her dry wit with prosaic quaintness. For example, the narrator notes: "It has been remarked (by a lady infinitely cleverer than the present author) how kindly disposed the world in general feels to young people who either die or marry. Imagine then the interest that surrounded Miss Wintertowne! No young lady ever had such advantages before: for she died upon the Tuesday, was raised to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and was married upon the Thursday; which some people thought too much excitement for one week." As Michel Faber explains in his review for The Guardian, "here we have all the defining features of Clarke's style simultaneously: the archly Austenesque tone, the somewhat overdone quaintness ('upon the Tuesday'), the winningly matter-of-fact use of the supernatural, and drollness to spare." Gregory Maguire notes in The New York Times that Clarke even gently ridicules the genre of the novel itself: "[A gentleman] picks up a book and begins to read ... but he is not attending to what he reads and he has got to Page 22 before he discovers it is a novel – the sort of work which above all others he most despises – and he puts it down in disgust." Elsewhere, the narrator remarks, "Dear Emma does not waste her energies upon novels like other young women." The narrator's identity has been a topic of discussion, with Clarke declaring that said narrator is female and omniscient rather than a future scholar from within the real storyline as some had suggested. Clarke's style extends to the novel's 185 footnotes, which document a meticulous invented history of English magic. At times, the footnotes dominate entire pages of the novel. Michael Dirda, in his review for The Washington Post, describes these notes as "dazzling feats of imaginative scholarship", in which the anonymous narrator "provides elaborate mini-essays, relating anecdotes from the lives of semi-legendary magicians, describing strange books and their contents, speculating upon the early years and later fate of the Raven King". This extensive extra-textual apparatus is reminiscent of postmodernist works, such as David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996) and Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon (1997), particularly as Clarke's notes humorously refer to previous notes in the novel. Clarke did not expect her publisher to accept the footnotes. Feeley explains that Romantic poet John Keats's "vision of enchantment and devastation following upon any dealings with faeries" informs the novel, as the passing reference to the "cold hillside" makes clear. The magic in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has been described as "wintry and sinister" and "a melancholy, macabre thing". There are "flocks of black birds, a forest that grows up in the canals of Venice, a countryside of bleak moors that can only be entered through mirrors, a phantom bell that makes people think of everything they have ever lost, a midnight darkness that follows an accursed man everywhere he goes". The setting reflects this tone, as "dark, fog, mist and wet give the book much of its creepy, northern atmosphere". According to Nisi Shawl in her review for The Seattle Times, the illustrations reinforce this tenor: "Shadows fill the illustrations by Portia Rosenberg, as apt as Edward Gorey's for Dickens' Bleak House." Author John Clute disagrees, arguing that they are "astonishingly inappropriate" to the tone of the novel. Noting that Clarke refers to important nineteenth-century illustrators George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson, whose works are "line-dominated, intricate, scabrous, cartoon-like, savage and funny", he is disappointed with the "soft and wooden" illustrations provided by Rosenberg. ## Genre Reviewers variously describe Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell as a fantasy novel, an alternative history, a historical fiction, or as a combination of these styles. Clarke herself says, "I think the novel is viewed as something new ... blending together a few genres – such as fantasy and adventure and pastiche historical – plus there's the whole thing about slightly knowing footnotes commenting on the story." She explains in an interview that she was particularly influenced by the historical fiction of Rosemary Sutcliff as well as the fantasies of Ursula K. Le Guin and Alan Garner, and that she loves the works of Austen. In his review for The Boston Globe, John Freeman observes that Clarke's fantasy, like that of Franz Kafka and Neil Gaiman, is imbued with realism. He argues that the footnotes in particular lend an air of credibility to the narrative: for example, they describe a fictional biography of Jonathan Strange and list where particular paintings in Norrell's house are located. In an interview, Clarke describes how she creates this realist fantasy: "One way of grounding the magic is by putting in lots of stuff about street lamps, carriages and how difficult it is to get good servants." To create this effect, the novel includes many references to real early-nineteenth century people and things, such as: artists Francisco Goya, Cruikshank, and Rowlandson; writers Frances Burney, William Beckford, "Monk" Lewis, Lord Byron, and Ann Radcliffe; Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and Austen's Emma; publisher John Murray; politicians Lord Castlereagh and George Canning; The Gentleman's Magazine and The Edinburgh Review; Chippendale and Wedgwood furnishings; and the madness of King George III. Clarke has said that she hopes the magic is as realistic as that in Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy. This realism has led other reviewers, such as Polly Shulman, to argue that Clarke's book is more of an historical fiction, akin to the works of Patrick O'Brian. As she explains, "Both Clarke's and O'Brian's stories are about a complicated relationship between two men bound together by their profession; both are set during the Napoleonic wars; and they share a dry, melancholy wit and unconventional narrative shape." Shulman sees fantasy and historical fiction as similar because both must follow rigid rules or risk a breakdown of the narrative. As well as literary styles, Clarke pastiches many Romantic literary genres: the comedy of manners, the Gothic tale, the silver-fork novel, the military adventure, the Byronic hero, and the historical romance of Walter Scott. In fact, Clarke's novel maps the literary history of the early nineteenth century: the novel begins with the style and genres of Regency England, an "Austenian world of light, bright, sparkling dialogue and well-mannered gentility", and gradually transforms into a dark, Byronic tale. Clarke combines these Romantic genres with modern ones, such as the fantasy novel, drawing on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Philip Pullman, T. H. White, and C. S. Lewis. As Maguire notes, Clarke includes rings of power and books of spells that originate in these authors' works. In contrast, Sacha Zimmerman suggests in The New Republic that while Tolkien's world is "entirely new", Clarke's world is more engaging because it is eerily close to the reader's. Although many reviewers compare Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell to the Harry Potter series, Annie Linskey contends in The Baltimore Sun that "the allusion is misleading": unlike J. K. Rowling's novels, Clarke's is morally ambiguous, with its complex plot and dark characters. ## Themes ### Friendship Reviewers focus most frequently on the dynamic between Norrell and Strange, arguing that the novel is about their relationship. In her review for the Times Literary Supplement, Roz Kaveney writes that the two illustrate Harold Bloom's notion of the "anxiety of influence" in addition to romantic friendship. The two are a "study in contrasts", with Norrell "exceptionally learned but shy and fussy" while Strange is "charming, young, fashionable and romantic". As one reviewer remarks, "Clarke could have called the book Sense and Sensibility if the title weren't already taken." ### Reason and madness The novel is not about the fight between good and evil but rather the differences between madness and reason—and it is the fairy world that is connected to madness (mad people can see fairies, for example). Lady Pole, who is taken away into the fairyland of Lost-Hope every night, appears insane to those around her. She is hidden away, like the character type examined by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their seminal book The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Developing a "divided consciousness", she is passive and quiet at home at the same time she is vengeful and murderous in the fairy land. ### Englishness Clarke's book is identified as distinctively English not only because of its style but also because of its themes of "vigorous common sense", "firm ethical fiber", "serene reason and self-confidence", which are drawn from its Augustan literary roots. The "muddy, bloody, instinctual spirit of the fairies" is equally a part of its Englishness, along with "arrogance, provincialism and class prejudice". The fairy tradition that Clarke draws on is particularly English; she alludes to tales from children's literature and others which date back to the medieval period. As Feeley notes, "The idea of fairies forming a hidden supernatural aristocracy certainly predates Spenser and Shakespeare, and seems to distinguish the English tales of wee folk from those of Scotland and Ireland." In these medieval English stories, the fairies are depicted as "capricious, inconsistent in their attitude toward humankind, [and] finally unknowable", characteristics which Clarke integrates into her own fairies. Clarke notes in an interview that she drew the idea of unpredictable, amoral fairies from the works of Neil Gaiman. In an interview with Locus, Clarke explains why and how she integrated the theme of "Englishness" into Jonathan Strange: "I wanted to explore my ideas of the fantastic, as well as my ideas of England and my attachment to English landscape. ... Sometimes it feels to me as though we don't have a fable of England, of Britain, something strong and idealized and romantic. I was picking up on things like Chesterton and Conan Doyle, and the sense (which is also in Jane Austen) of what it was to be an English gentleman at the time when England was a very confident place". In particular, "it's the sort of Englishness which is stuffy but fundamentally benevolent, and fundamentally very responsible about the rest of the world", which connects Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to Clarke's Jonathan Strange. ### Historical otherness Using techniques of the genre of alternative history, Clarke creates events and characters that would have been out of place in the early nineteenth century. She also explores the "silencing" of under-represented groups: women, people of colour, and poor whites. Both Strange and Norrell suppress the voices of these groups in their rise to power. Mr Norrell, for example, attempts to buy up all the books of magic in England to keep anyone else from acquiring their knowledge. He also barters away half of Emma Wintertowne's (Lady Pole's) life for political influence, a deal about which, due to an enchantment, she cannot speak coherently. Clarke explores the limits of "English" magic through the characters of Stephen Black and Vinculus. As Clarke explains, "If you put a fairy next to a person who is also outside English society ... suddenly the fact that there is this alien race seems more believable, because you've got another alien and the two of them can talk about the English in this very natural way." The gentleman with the thistle-down hair idealizes Stephen as a noble savage and enslaves him by taking him to the Lost-Hope—like Lady Pole, Stephen is silenced. Both "suffer under a silencing spell that mimics gaps in the historical record". Furthermore, the gentleman's desire to acquire Stephen for his dancing hall is reminiscent of the objectification of black slaves in European society. Stephen vows to eternally hate all white men after he hears the circumstances of the death of his enslaved mother, but when the thistle-down haired gentleman kills the white Vinculus in front of Stephen, he weeps. Both Strange and Norrell see the essence of Englishness in the Raven King, a character who was raised by fairies and could not speak English. As Elizabeth Hoiem explains, "The most English of all Englishmen, then, is both king and slave, in many ways indistinguishable from Stephen Black. This paradox is what ultimately resolves the plot. When Strange and Norrell summon 'the nameless slave', the Raven King's powerful alliances with nature are transferred to Stephen Black, allowing Stephen to kill the Gentleman and free himself from slavery." In the end, it is Strange and Norrell who are trapped in everlasting darkness while the silenced women, people of colour, and poor whites defeat the antagonist. ## Reception To promote Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Bloomsbury—who also published the Harry Potter series—launched what The Observer called "one of the biggest marketing campaigns in publishing history". Their campaign included plans for newspaper serialisations, book deliveries by horse and carriage, and the placement of "themed teasers", such as period stationery and mock newspapers, in United States coffeeshops. 7,500 advance readers' copies were sent out, a limited number wrapped in paper and sealed with wax. These sold for more than US\$100 each on eBay in England in the weeks leading up to publication. By 2005, collectors were paying hundreds of pounds for signed copies of a limited edition of the novel. The book debuted at No. 9 on the New York Times best-seller list, rising to No. 3 two weeks later. It remained on the list for eleven weeks. Four weeks after the book's initial publication, it was in Amazon's top ten. Clarke went on a 20-city tour to promote the novel, after its near-simultaneous publication in 20 countries. Endorsements from independent booksellers helped the book sell out its first printing; by the end of September 2004, it had gone through eight printings. The novel met with "a crackle of favorable reviews in major papers". The New Republic hailed it as "an exceptional work", both "thoughtful and irrepressibly imaginative". The Houston Chronicle described Clarke as "a superb character writer", and the Denver Post called her a "superb storyteller". The reviews praised Clarke's "deft" handling of the pastiche of styles, but many criticised the novel's pace, The Guardian complaining that "the plot creaks frightfully in many places and the pace dawdles". In his review for Science Fiction Weekly, Clute suggested that "almost every scene in the first 300 pages should have been carefully and delicately trimmed" (emphasis in original) since they do little to advance the story. He argued that, at times, Clarke's Austenesque tone gets in the way of plot development. On the other hand, The Baltimore Sun found the novel "a quick read". Complaining that the book leaves the reader "longing for just a bit more lyricism and poetry", The Washington Post reviewer noted, with others, that "sex plays virtually no role in the story ... [and] one looks in vain for the corruption of the innocent". The New Statesman reviewer, Amanda Craig, praised the novel as "a tale of magic such as might have been written by the young Jane Austen – or, perhaps, by the young Mrs Radcliffe, whose Gothic imagination and exuberant delicacy of style set the key." However, she also criticised the book: "As fantasy, it is deplorable, given that it fails to embrace the essentially anarchic nature of such tales. What is so wonderful about magicians, wizards and all witches other than Morgan le Fay is not just their magical powers, but that they possess these in spite of being low-born. Far from caring about being gentlemen, wizards are the ultimate expression of rank's irrelevance to talent". However, reviewers were not in universal agreement on any of these points. Maguire wrote in the New York Times: > What keeps this densely realised confection aloft is that very quality of reverence to the writers of the past. The chief character in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell isn't, in fact, either of the magicians: it's the library that they both adore, the books they consult and write and, in a sense, become. Clarke's giddiness comes from finding a way at once to enter the company of her literary heroes, to pay them homage and to add to the literature. While promoting the novel, Neil Gaiman said that it was "unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last 70 years", a statement which has most often been read hyperbolically. However, as Clute explains, what Gaiman meant was that Jonathan Strange is "the finest English novel of the fantastic since Hope Mirrlees's great Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), which is almost certainly the finest English fantasy about the relationship between England and the fantastic yet published" (emphasis in original). Gaiman himself concurred with this view, stating that he had had Lud-in-the-Mist in mind when making his promotion and that, when asked about Tolkien's place in English fantasy, "I would explain that I did not, and do not, think of The Lord of the Rings as English fantasy but as high fantasy." Clute writes that "a more cautious claim" would be: "if Susanna Clarke finishes the story she has hardly begun in Strange ... she may well have then written the finest English novel of the fantastic about the myth of England and the myth of the fantastic and the marriage of the two ever published, bar none of the above, including Mirrlees." ## Awards and nominations ## Adaptations and sequel ### Film On 15 October 2004, New Line Cinema announced that it had bought a three-year option on the film rights to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Clarke received an undisclosed "seven-figure sum", making the deal "one of the biggest acquisitions of film rights for a book in recent years". New Line chose Christopher Hampton, whose adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons won an Academy Award, to write it; New Line executives Mark Ordesky and Ileen Maisel were overseeing the production. On 7 November 2005, The Daily Telegraph reported that Hampton had finished the first draft: "As you can imagine, it took a fair amount of time to work out some way to encapsulate that enormous book in a film of sensible length ... [b]ut it was lots of fun – and very unlike anything I have ever done before." At that time, no director or cast had yet been chosen. As of June 2006, Hampton was still working on the screenplay. Julian Fellowes then took over writing duties before the collapse of New Line Cinema. ### Television A seven-part adaptation of the book by the BBC began broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 17 May 2015. The book was adapted by Peter Harness, directed by Toby Haynes, and produced by Cuba Pictures and Feel Films. A number of co-producers joined the project, including BBC America, Screen Yorkshire, Space and Far Moor, and it is to be distributed by Endemol Worldwide Distribution. Pre-production began in April 2013, and filming later in the year, including locations in Yorkshire and Canada. ### Audio book The 32-hour audio book of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was released by Audio Renaissance in 2004. According to a review in The Boston Globe, reader Simon Prebble "navigates this production with much assuredness and an array of accents. ... Prebble's full voice is altered to a delicate softness for young ladies of a certain breeding, or tightened to convey the snarkiness often heard in the costive Norrell." Prebble interrupts the main text to read the footnotes, announcing them with the word footnote. According to the AudioFile review, the "narrative flow suffers" because of these interruptions and the reviewer recommends listening "with text in hand". Each note is on its own track, so listeners have the option of skipping them without missing text from the main narrative. When doing public readings, Clarke herself skips the notes. ### Sequel In 2004, Clarke mentioned that she was working on a book that begins a few years after Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell ends, intended to centre on characters such as Childermass and Vinculus who, as Clarke says, are "a bit lower down the social scale". She commented in 2005 and 2007 that progress on the book had been slowed by her ill health. In 2006 it was reported that she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome, although she has since received a wide assortment of diagnoses. In promotional interviews for her second novel, Piranesi, she commented that her illness would have made the effort required to research and write another book of the same scope “insurmountable” even when partially recovered, and that she had instead devoted her time to an older, “much more feasible” idea, which became Piranesi. The sequel, she said, is “a long way off”: > I think it may be a feature with chronic fatigue that you become incapable of making decisions. I found it impossible to decide between one version of a sentence and another version, but also between having the plot go in this direction and having it go in that direction. Everything became like uncontained bushes, shooting out in all directions. That’s the state that the sequel to Jonathan Strange is in. It’s almost like a forest now.

Getting It: The Psychology of est

Non-fiction book by Sheridan Fenwick

Getting It: The Psychology of est, a non-fiction book by American clinical psychologist Sheridan Fenwick first published in 1976, analyzes Werner Erhard's Erhard Seminars Training or est. Fenwick based the book on her own experience of attending a four-day session of the est training, an intensive 60-hour personal-development course in the self-help genre. Large groups of up to 250 people took the est training at one time. In the first section of Fenwick's book, she recounts the est training process and the methods used during the course. Fenwick details the rules or "agreements" laid out by the trainers to the attendees, which include not talking to others or leaving the session to go to the bathroom unless during an announced break period. The second section is analytic: Fenwick analyzes the methods used by the est trainers, evaluates the course's potential effects, and discusses Erhard's background. Fenwick concludes that the program's long-term effects are unknown, the est training may not be appropriate for certain groups of people, and that a large proportion of participants report perceived positive effects. Writing in Library Journal, psychiatrist James Charney describes the book as "the only useful critical look" at the training. Zane Berzins of The New York Times Book Review characterizes the book as a "calm and professionally informed view". Hearings held in 1979 before the United States House of Representatives on a juvenile delinquents program depicted in Scared Straight! cited the book for background on the est training, as did psychologist Gidi Rubinstein in a 2005 study of the Landmark Forum published in the academic journal Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. ## Background Werner Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg), was originally from Pennsylvania and migrated to California. A former salesman, training manager and executive in the encyclopedia business, Erhard created the Erhard Seminars Training (est) course in 1971. est was a form of Large Group Awareness Training, and was part of the Human Potential Movement. est was a four-day, 60-hour self-help program given to groups of 250 people at a time. The program was very intensive: each day would contain 15–20 hours of instruction. During the training, est personnel utilized specialized vocabulary to convey key concepts, and participants agreed to rules which remained in effect for the duration of the course. Participants were taught that they were responsible for their life outcomes. Est had its critics and proponents. A year after Getting It was published, over 100,000 people completed the est training, including public figures and mental health professionals. In 1985, Werner Erhard and Associates repackaged the course as "The Forum", a seminar focused on "goal-oriented breakthroughs". By 1988, approximately one million people had taken some form of the trainings. In the early 1990s Erhard faced family problems, as well as tax problems that were eventually resolved in his favor. A group of his associates formed the company Landmark Education in 1991. ## Author Sheridan Fenwick, in her early thirties when Getting It was published, had graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Goucher College and received a doctorate in psychopathology and social psychology from Cornell University. Her Ph.D. dissertation was published in 1975. Fenwick served as the director of social policy in the Department of City Planning of Chicago, Illinois, as assistant attending psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center, and as a faculty member of Columbia University's department of psychology. Fenwick writes that although she had been trained as a clinical psychologist, she avoided "consciousness" movements and never participated in transactional analysis or similar therapies, including Transcendental Meditation, Esalen, Arica, Gestalt therapy and Mind Dynamics. When she met with graduates of the est training and heard their testimonials and observed their level of self-confidence, she considered taking the training. After some preliminary research, Fenwick decided to take the training as a participant rather than as a professional observer. She paid the \$250.00 course fee and enrolled in a four-day est program to examine its methods and its appeal. She reports that the training was an "extraordinary experience", but that she had "serious concerns about the implications of the est phenomenon", and that people should know more about it. The book was first published September 16, 1976, by J. B. Lippincott Company. A second edition was published by Penguin Books in 1977. Fenwick went on to work as director of the Behavioral Medicine Clinic at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, before retiring in 1993 to set up Psybar, an online service to provide psychological experts for court cases. ## Contents The book comprises two sections. The first section describes Fenwick's own experiences of the training; the second analyzes the est program's methodology and effects. In her analysis of the course, she states: > "While the consensus of informed opinion, based on summaries of research findings, is that interventions similar to the est training have only modestly positive effects, I think that the existing research provides us with an underestimate of the effect of the est training. This training represents a distillation of some of the most powerful techniques and central precepts for attitude and behavior change ... I would guess that the effects of the est training are substantial for a large proportion of people." In the latter portion of the book Fenwick discusses comparisons of the est training to brainwashing and to psychotherapy, potential harmful effects of the course, and the extent that positive benefit from the course may be attributed to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fenwick sees est as a form of psychotherapy that utilizes "in" therapies, and questions its suitability for certain individuals. Fenwick writes that the est training draws influences from Synanon, Gestalt therapy, encounter groups, and Scientology. She discusses the potential positive and negative psychological effects that can occur subsequent to taking the est training. She analyzes the rules of the training, and the behavioral tools used by the trainers, and points out that the est personnel are not qualified to assess psychopathology. Fenwick asserts that tactics including sensory deprivation and the large group setting of 250 people at a time help to make the training "work". She describes this as a "compression chamber effect", and asserts that it leads to the "hysterical confessions and the euphoric testimonials" she observed in the course. Fenwick cites the secrecy of the est organization as an impediment to meaningful study, and states that the studies cited by est itself are inadequate and inconclusive. Fenwick writes that a lack of "sophisticated research designs" limits the ability to properly determine long-term benefits or harm caused by the course and notes: "est uses techniques indiscriminately which, in a certain proportion of the population, are known to be harmful and potentially quite dangerous". She concludes that it is difficult to determine whether est "produces any more than a superficial catharsis, or whether it might be harmful to certain people", and states that the long-range effects of the training remain unknown. While reporting on testimonials of "perceived" changes as a result of the est training, Fenwick asks rhetorically: > "Should we completely discount the testimonials of est graduates, knowing that they are not sufficiently rigorous measures to qualify as scientific evidence? I don't think so. The fact that positive testimonials are so readily obtained from est graduates, in combination with the observation that a majority of people who take the est training, continue to participate and have found the est experience to be rewarding. Even if 'objective' changes are not documented in people's lives, it is noteworthy that people feel happier, more satisfied, more relaxed, and more 'alive.' If you 'feel' happier, then you 'are' happier – objective circumstances notwithstanding. Subjective states are clearly an important component of our lives." ## Reception Getting It received mixed, but generally positive, reviews. One positive evaluation came from psychiatrist James Charney, in a 1976 review for Library Journal. Charney calls the book "the only useful critical look at this essential issue", referring to the est training. He notes in particular that Fenwick's "analysis of the function of the group, the restrictive rules, and the enforced discomfort is convincing". In a 1977 review in Library Journal Edith Crockett and Ellis Mount highly recommended the book, commenting that "A plethora of newspaper and magazine reports, along with books written by graduates ... have attempted to explain the phenomenon of this self-help program, but none has done it as well or as objectively as this writer." Kirkus Reviews noted the precedent set by the analytical nature of the book, writing "Finally. Here's someone who is willing to disclose the details of Erhard Seminars Training, and then go on to analyze them from a psychological point of view." Zane Berzins, writing for The New York Times Book Review in 1977, describes Fenwick's work as a "calm and professionally informed view". Berzins describes the book as a "brave attempt" at an analysis of est's appeal, and concludes that "It's hardly an incendiary exposé, but Fenwick's open-minded scrutiny should deglamourize the est movement." William McGurk reviewed the book in Contemporary Psychology. Although McGurk praises the book's description of the est seminars, noting that it "present[s] a clear picture of the process", he also criticizes Fenwick's subsequent analysis, saying she "sounds like a different person" than in the first section. McGurk writes that "It's as though she put on her psychoanalytically oriented, professional hat and ran a tape that was far from being effective." A review in Publishers Weekly states that Fenwick's "inbred detachment may have kept her from the full impact of the 'experience' the training was meant to be (and is for many)". Even so, the review notes that Fenwick "scores heavily" in the section where she questions the nature of the est training and Erhard's background; it recommends that Getting It be read alongside Luke Rhinehart's The Book of est. The book is recommended by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton's 1992 book Perspectives on the New Age, where they describe it as "a thorough discussion of est training methods and the psychology behind them". Other works that cite the book for background on est include Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman; and Evaluating a Large Group Awareness Training, a study commissioned by Erhard's successor company to est, Werner Erhard and Associates. Fenwick's work was cited in 1979 hearings before the United States House of Representatives on a controversial program for juvenile delinquents, which was depicted in the Academy Award-winning documentary film Scared Straight!. Getting It is cited in background discussion of the est training: "Fenwick has pointed out that sophisticated assessment of individual psychopathology is beyond the competence and training of the est personnel; it is also outside the est value system, since the training is held to be almost universally beneficial." Psychologist Gidi Rubinstein cites the book as a reference in a 2005 study of the Landmark Forum, a course descended from the est training, which he presented in the academic journal Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.

The Oceanides

Tone poem by Jean Sibelius

The Oceanides (in Finnish: Aallottaret; literal English translation: Nymphs of the Waves or Spirits of the Waves; original working title: Rondeau der Wellen; in English: Rondo of the Waves), Op. 73, is a single-movement tone poem for orchestra written from 1913 to 1914 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which refers to the nymphs in Greek mythology who inhabited the Mediterranean Sea, premiered on 4 June 1914 at the Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut with Sibelius conducting. Praised upon its premiere as "the finest evocation of the sea ... ever ... produced in music", the tone poem, in D major, consists of two subjects, said to represent the playful activity of the nymphs and the majesty of the ocean, respectively. Sibelius gradually develops this material over three informal stages: first, a placid ocean; second, a gathering storm; and third, a thunderous wave-crash climax. As the tempest subsides, a final chord sounds, symbolizing the mighty power and limitless expanse of the sea. Stylistically, many commentators have described The Oceanides as an example of Impressionism. Others have countered that Sibelius's active development of the two subjects, his sparing use of scales favored by Impressionists, and his prioritization of action and structure over ephemeral, atmospheric background distinguish the piece from quintessential examples, such as Debussy's La mer. Aside from the definitive D major tone poem, two intermediate versions of The Oceanides survive: the first, a three-movement orchestral suite, in E major, that dates to 1913 (movement No. 1 lost); and the second, the initial single-movement "Yale" version of the tone poem, in D major, which Sibelius dispatched to America in advance of his journey but revised prior to the music festival. The Oceanides thus stands alongside En saga, the Lemminkäinen Suite, the Violin Concerto, and the Fifth Symphony as one of Sibelius's most overhauled works. The suite and Yale version, never performed in the composer's lifetime, received their world premieres by Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra on 10 September and 24 October 2002, respectively. A typical performance of the final version lasts about 10 minutes, some 3 minutes longer than its Yale predecessor. ## History ### Composition In August 1913, Sibelius received a message from the American composer and Yale University professor Horatio Parker: a New England patron of the arts, Carl Stoeckel (1858–1925), and his wife, Ellen Stoeckel née Battell (1851–1939), had authorized \$1,000 for the commission of a new symphonic poem from Sibelius, per Parker's recommendation. The piece, not to exceed fifteen minutes in length, was to be played at the 1914 Norfolk Music Festival in Connecticut, which the Stoeckels annually hosted (and financed) at their estate in a wooden performance hall dubbed "The Music Shed". Despite his ongoing struggles with another commission, incidental music to Poul Knudsen's tragic ballet-pantomime Scaramouche, Sibelius accepted the Stoeckel offer, writing in his diary, "A symphonic poem, ready by April". #### Initial and intermediate versions In early September, another letter from Parker arrived saying that Stockel wished to provide the copyist's fee for writing out the orchestral parts in Finland. As 1913 drew to a close, Sibelius had not made much progress on the American commission, having spent the entire autumn on other pieces and revisions. A trip to Berlin in January 1914 followed, and Sibelius's diary and correspondence indicate the Stoeckel commission was at the forefront of his mind; an initial plan to set Rydberg's poem Fantasos and Sulamit subsequently was discarded. His stay in Berlin was not productive, and in mid-February he returned to Helsinki ("Uneasy because of the America thing [Norfolk commission]. Presumably have to go home to my cell in order to be able to concentrate".) Today, three versions of the work survive. Initially in 1913, Sibelius conceived of the commission as a three-movement suite for orchestra in E major, of which only No. 2 (Tempo moderato) and No. 3 (Allegro) are extant. At some point in 1913–14, Sibelius decided to rework the thematic material of the Allegro, very much a "work in progress", into a single-movement symphonic poem; the musical content of the Tempo moderato would find its way into the piano piece Till trånaden (To Longing), JS 202. In making the transition from suite to tone poem, Sibelius transposed the material from E to D major; in addition, he also introduced new musical ideas, such as the rocking wave-like motif in the strings and woodwinds, and expanded the orchestration. #### Final version In April 1914, Sibelius mailed the score and parts to the United States, calling the piece Rondeau der Wellen (this intermediate version of the tone poem is commonly referred to as the "Yale" version). On 12 and 20 April 1914, Parker wrote on behalf of Stoeckel, expanding upon the initial agreement: Sibelius's American patron now wished him to travel to and conduct a program of his music at the Norfolk festival; as compensation, Sibelius would receive \$1,200, as well as an honorary doctorate of music from Yale University. Although he already had sent the manuscript to Norfolk, Sibelius was not satisfied with the score and immediately began to revise the piece, eventually opting for a complete overhaul ("Isn't it just like me to rework the tone poem—at the moment I am ablaze with it."). Although Sibelius was prone to revising his compositions, such effort was usually undertaken when preparing a piece for publication or after having heard it first performed in concert. With respect to the Yale version, it is possible the invitation to attend the music festival in person prompted Sibelius to "reassess" the tone poem with a more critical eye. The differences between the first and final versions of the tone poem are substantial; not only did Sibelius again transpose the piece, into D major, but he also added the wave-crash climax. Despite these changes, the orchestration is more or less the same, with the addition of one trumpet. As the trip to America approached, Sibelius raced to complete the revisions in time. Aino Sibelius, the composer's wife, recounts the scenes at Ainola: > The trip to America is approaching. Rondeau der Wellen is not yet complete. Terrible haste ... the score is only half-ready. The copyist, Mr. Kauppi, is staying with us and writing night and day ... It is only because of Janne's [Sibelius] energy that we are making progress ... We lit a lamp in the dining room, a chandelier in the living room, it was a festive moment. I didn't dare say a word. I just checked that the environment was in order. Then I went to bed and Janne stayed up. All night long I could hear his footsteps, alternating with music played quietly. Sibelius continued to make changes to the final version of the tone poem as he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean aboard the steamship SS Kaiser Wilhelm II and even during rehearsals in Norfolk, but these last-minute changes, Andrew Barnett argues, must have been relatively "minor", as the orchestral parts had been copied before his departure from Finland. Sibelius was delighted with the new piece, writing to Aino, "It's as though I have found myself, and more besides. The Fourth Symphony was the start. But in this piece there is so much more. There are passages in it that drive me crazy. Such poetry". Neither the suite nor the Yale version of the tone poem was performed in Sibelius's lifetime, receiving their world premieres by Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra on 19 September and 24 October 2002, respectively. #### Naming the piece Sibelius appears to have vacillated over a name for the new tone poem. By 3 April 1914 he had dropped Rondeau der Wellen in favor of Aallottaret. On 29 April he wrote to Parker in favor of the original title ("Herr Doctor, now you must forgive me for performing the new tone poem in its final version with the original title Rondeau der Wellen. The version Aallottaret that I sent to you can stay with Mr. Stoeckel".). This position, too, proved fleeting. By the end of May, Sibelius had settled on Aallottaret, and the tone poem appeared under this title, albeit misspelled, on the 4 June Norfolk Festival program: "Aalottaret [sic]—Tone Poem (Nymphs of the Ocean)". In preparation for the publication of the tone poem by Breitkopf & Härtel in June 1915, Sibelius included alongside the Finnish title, Aallottaret, an "explanatory" German translation, Die Okeaniden (in English: The Oceanides). The piece was published as Op. 73 and dedicated to Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel. ### Performances #### American premiere The tone poem premiered on 4 June 1914 at "The Shed" concert hall of the Norfolk Music Festival, Sibelius himself conducting at a podium decorated in the American and Finnish national colors. The orchestra, which Sibelius praised as "wonderful ... surpasses anything we have in Europe", comprised musicians drawn from three of America's best music societies: the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The Oceanides was unlike anything the musicians had previously encountered. "I think they did not understand it all at first from what they said", Stoeckel recalled. "The next morning, after having run it through three times, they were thoroughly delighted with it and remarked that the beauty of the music grew with each rehearsal". The festival public sounded a similarly positive note about the new piece, which concluded a concert of Sibelius's music that included Pohjola's Daughter, the King Christian II Suite, The Swan of Tuonela, Finlandia, and Valse triste. Stoeckel recounts the events of 4 June: > Everyone who was fortunate enough to be in the audience agreed that it was the musical event of their lives, and after the performance of the last number there was an ovation to the composer which I have never seen equalled anywhere, the entire audience rose to their feet and shouted with enthusiasm, and probably the calmest man in the whole hall was the composer himself; he bowed repeatedly with that distinction of manner which was so typical of him ... As calm as Sibelius had appeared on the stage, after his part was over he came up stairs and sank into a chair in one of the dressing rooms and was very much overcome. Some people declared that he wept. Personally I do not think that he did, but there were tears in his eyes as he shook our hands and thanked us for what he was pleased to call the "honor we had done him". Upon conclusion of the second half of the program (which featured Dvořák's Ninth Symphony, Coleridge-Taylor's rhapsody From the Prairie, and the overture to Wagner's opera Die Feen), the orchestra performed the Finnish national anthem, Vårt Land. #### European premiere With the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, The Oceanides languished. Wartime politics being what they were, Sibelius's music was seldom played outside the Nordic countries and the United States: in Germany, there was little demand for the music of an "enemy national", while in Russia, Finns were viewed as being "less than loyal subjects of the Tsar". In any case, many of Sibelius's works had been printed by German publishing houses, a detail that harmed Sibelius's reputation not only in Russia, but also Britain and the United States. According to Tawaststjerna, the war plunged Sibelius into a state of melancholy and creative struggle (the Fifth and Sixth symphonies were in the process of simultaneous gestation at this time). His response was to retreat into near solitude: he abstained from attending and giving concerts and neglected his circle of friends, and he imagined himself "forgotten and ignored, a lonely beacon of light in a deepening winter darkness". Sibelius was not easily stirred from his exile; friend and fellow composer Wilhelm Stenhammar, then Artistic Director and chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, wrote to Sibelius repeatedly to persuade him to conduct a concert of his works in Gothenburg. Believing himself duty-bound to premiere a "major work" in Sweden, such as a symphony, Sibelius—to Stenhammar's chagrin—delayed each scheduled trip. He withdrew from planned concerts for March 1914, writing to Stenhammar, "My conscience forces me to this. But when I have some new works ready next year, as I hope, it would give me great joy to perform them in Gothenburg". New arrangements were made for February 1915, but these, too, Sibelius canceled in December 1914. In the end, the indefatigable Stenhammar prevailed and new concerts were set for March 1915 ("I see yet again your great sympathy for my music. I shall come".). Stenhammar's efforts were rewarded with the European premiere of The Oceanides. For Sibelius, it was an opportunity to once again be an "artist on tour", feeding off the energy and "rapturous ovations" of an audience (it had been nine months since the Norfolk concerts, which now seemed a distant memory). The first concert, on March 22, featured the Second Symphony, Scènes historiques II, and two movements from Swanwhite before concluding with The Oceanides. According to Sibelius's diary, the performance was a "great success", with Stenhammar "captivated" particularly by the final number. The 24 March program retained The Oceanides, but paired it with Scènes historiques I, the Nocturne from the King Christian II Suite, a movement from Rakastava, Lemminkäinen's Return, and the Fourth Symphony. Sibelius was very pleased with the orchestra's handling of The Oceanides, calling its performance "wonderful". He goes on to note in his diary that, "After the final number [The Oceanides] there was a deafening torrent of applause, stamps, cries of bravo, a standing ovation and fanfares from the orchestra". #### Other notable performances The Finnish premiere of The Oceanides occurred on the occasion of Sibelius's fiftieth birthday celebration on 8 December 1915 at the Great Hall of the University of Helsinki, with Sibelius conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. The program, which The Oceanides opened, also included the two Serenades for violin and orchestra (Op. 69, Richard Burgin was the soloist) and, most importantly, the world premiere of the Fifth Symphony, at that time still in four movements. The birthday program was well received, and Sibelius twice repeated it, once at the Finnish National Theatre on 12 December and then again at the University of Helsinki on 18 December. The celebrations continued into the new year, with Sibelius conducting The Oceanides at a concert in Finland's Folketshus on 9 January 1916. The tone poem was also taken up in the spring by Sibelius's brother-in-law, Armas Järnefelt, who led the Stockholm Opera Orchestra. Robert Kajanus later followed with a performance of The Oceanides in February 1917. ## Orchestration The Oceanides is scored for the following instruments: - Woodwinds: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets (in B), bass clarinet (in B), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon - Brass: 4 horns (in F), 3 trumpets (in B), 3 trombones - Percussion: 2 timpani, triangle, glockenspiel ("stahlstäbe") - Strings: violins, violas, cellos, double basses, 2 harps ## Structure The Oceanides is a single-movement tone poem that consists of two main subjects, A and B. The "lively" A section (in duple meter), first introduced by the flutes at the beginning of the piece, can be said to represent the playful activity of the nymphs: Shortly after, solo oboe and clarinet—supported by harp glissandi and strings—introduce the "majestic" B section (in triple meter), which brings to mind the ocean's depth and expansiveness and perhaps, at least according to Tawaststjerna, "the God of the Sea himself": Sibelius gradually expands and deepens the two subjects, building up to an enormous (almost onomatopoeic) wave-crash climax that Daniel Grimley has characterized as a "point of textural, dynamic and chromatic saturation". Formally stated by Tawaststjerna, the tone poem structurally proceeds as follows: - A (D major) - B (modulating, ending in the area of D minor–F major) - A₁ (F major; A returns, but "the winds begin to gather force") - B₁ (ending in E major–G major; B returns and "brings the storm nearer") - C (modulating and ending on the pedal A, which becomes the dominant of D major; serves as development by utilizing material from both A and B; "the oceanides are swamped" by the storm and the swell of the sea's waves) - A₂ (intermediate D major; the storm ends and the theme of the oceanides returns) - Coda (final chord demonstrates "the immutability and vastness of the ocean waters into which the oceanides themselves do not venture") Grimley interprets the piece as progressing through "a series of three generative, wave-like cycles", perhaps best described as placid ocean (A–B), gathering storm (A₁–B₁), and wave-crash climax (C–A). David Hurwitz views the structure of the piece similarly to Tawaststjerna, albeit as A–B–A–B–Coda(B–A), which he terms "sonata form without development", while Robert Layton considers The Oceanides "something ... of a free rondo", due to the continued reappearance of the opening flute theme (A). ## Reception Critical opinion as to the merit of The Oceanides has been overwhelmingly positive, and today the piece is counted among Sibelius's masterpieces. Following the 1914 premiere, Olin Downes, the American music critic and Sibelius devotee, described the new work as "the finest evocation of the sea which has ever been produced in music", praising the composer for his "extraordinarily developed feeling for form, proportion and continuity". Downes furthermore assessed Sibelius's Norfolk concert as just the third time since 1900 that he had "felt himself in the presence of a genius of world class" (the other two being Richard Strauss in 1904 and Arturo Toscanini in 1910). An unsigned review in the New-York Tribune (almost certainly penned by critic Henry Krehbiel) found the new work "fresh and vital, full of imagination and strong in climax". He continues: > Extremists will probably deplore the fact that the composer is still a respecter of form, still a devotee of beauty, still a believer in the potency of melody; but this is rather a matter for congratulation than regret ... Mr. Sibelius is a fine musical constructionist, an eloquent harmonist and a fine colorist despite his fondness for dark tints. The influential Swedish critic Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, always a thorn in Sibelius's side and whom the composer had once mocked as "his lordship", required some three encounters with The Oceanides before warming to the new symphonic poem: after hearing the Stockholm Concert Society under Sibelius in 1923, Peterson-Berger at last embraced the piece. "The Oceanides was totally and completely different from three years ago under Schnéevoigt", he wrote. "In this beautiful poem one really heard something of the sound of the Aegean Sea and of Homer". The composer (and former Sibelius pupil) Leevi Madetoja further praised the score upon review, writing in Uusi Suometar in July 1914 that Sibelius, rather than "repeat[ing] endlessly" the style of his previous works, had yet again shown his penchant for "renewing himself musically ... always forward, striving for new aims". The Finnish critic Karl Wasenius (aka BIS), writing in Hufvudstadsbladet after the birthday celebration performances of 1915, wrote approvingly of Sibelius's "refined mastery" of technique. "Not a single note is wasted on brash effects", Wasenius continued. "Yet mighty things are still achieved. Sibelius gives us the expanse and magnitude of the ocean, its powerful wave-song but without boastful gestures. He is too noble for that". In Tidning för musik, Otto Anderssen interpreted Sibelius's latest compositions (among them The Oceanides) as yet another indicator that he was among the most forward-looking modernists: "Sibelius is, I believe, a man of the future ... constantly ahead of his time. Now he stands at the heights where the horizon stretches out over fields which the rest of us cannot yet see". Cecil Gray, moreover, calls the piece "daring" and applauds the score's "exceptional complexity and refinement", challenging critics who see Sibelius as a "primitive artist". Later commentators also found much to praise in The Oceanides. Guy Rickards describes the tone poem as an "extraordinary score", magnificent yet subtle in its depiction of the sea's various moods, but nonetheless "music suffused by light", while Robert Layton sees the piece as "far more ambitious and highly organized in design" than its immediate predecessor, The Bard. Tawaststjerna notes Sibelius's success at characterizing the sea: the "playful flutes" that bring the oceanides to life but which feel "alien" in the landscape's vastness; the "powerful swell" of wind and water conveyed by oboe and clarinet over undulating strings and harp glissandi; the sustained wind chord symbolizing the "limitless expanse of the sea"; and, the "mighty climax" of the storm, the final wave crash which "always exceeds one's expectations". The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has argued in favor of the D major Yale version, feeling as though the piece loses "something essential" in terms of orchestral color in D major: "The orchestral tone in D major is veiled, somehow mysterious and impressionistic. Compared with it D major sounds clearer, but also more matter-of-fact". The conductor Osmo Vänskä also has noted the difference between the two keys, comparing the D major version to a "large lake" and the D major to a "mighty ocean". ## Analysis ### Relation to Impressionism Stylistically, many commentators have described The Oceanides as broadly impressionistic, in particular drawing comparisons with Debussy's La mer. Harold Johnson, for example, writes that the themes and orchestration of the piece, with muted string tremolos and harp glissandi, "bear more than a superficial resemblance" to Debussy's style (he further suggests that Sibelius may have feared his original title, Rondeau der Wellen, was "too close to Debussy"). Gray, who calls the orchestral technique in The Oceanides "strikingly different" from anything else in Sibelius's oeuvre, stresses that the work is far from "derivative". Rather, he argues that Sibelius builds upon and revolutionizes the French impressionist technique, making it "entirely his own, and not merely a reflection or distortion of Debussy". Gray continues: > The French masters of the method and their imitators in other countries confined their attention for the most part to an exploitation of the possibilities afforded by the upper reaches of the orchestral register, and to the attainment, principally, of effects of brilliance and luminosity. Debussy's writing for the lower instruments, and for the double-bases in particular, is as a general rule timid and conventional in comparison with his treatment of the higher instruments, as a result, doubtless, of his exaggerated fear of thickness of texture. In The Oceanides Sibelius has explored the lower depths of the orchestra more thoroughly than any one had previously done, and applied the impressionist method of scoring to the bass instruments, thereby achieving effects of sonority hitherto unknown. While conceding the impressionistic feel of The Oceanides, Nils-Eric Ringbom warns that the comparison with Debussy should not be taken too far. Whereas in Debussy's works "there is seldom anything that grows thematically or undergoes development" (instead, Debussy marvels the listener with "his mastery in rendering dreamy, passive moods and fleeting, restrained emotions"), Sibelius places "too much weight on the logical development of his musical ideas to let ... them flicker out in the empty nothingness of thematic instability"; in other words, he insists that "atmospheric background swallow neither action nor structure". Sibelius's impressionism is thus "far more ... active" than Debussy's. Other commentators have cautioned against the conclusion that The Oceanides is either an example of impressionism or somehow stylistically indebted to Debussy. Tawaststjerna, for example, believes that the piece's "anchorage in the major-minor harmony and the relatively sparing use of modal and whole-tone formulae" indicates that the tone poem "belongs to the world of late romanticism", the impressionistic character of its texture, harmonic vocabulary, and rhythmic patterns notwithstanding. Hurwitz has likewise criticized the "roaring cataract of nonsense in the Sibelius literature" about the influence of the French impressionists on the composer. "Similar musical problems often produce similar solutions", Hurwitz notes. "In this case, any symphonic portrait of the ocean is bound to rely more on texture and color than on vocal melody, for the simple reason that the ocean is not a person and does not sing ... nor does it lend itself to ... [an] anthropomorphic approach ...". Layton detects the presence of "normal Sibelian procedures and techniques" in The Oceanides, dismissing any serious debt to Debussy. "Its growth from the opening bars onward is profoundly organic", Layton writes. "And its apparent independence from the rest of Sibelius's work is manifest only at a superficial level". ### Relation to The Bard The Oceanides traces back to sketches for a three-movement suite for orchestra in E major that Sibelius likely had begun in 1913; today, only No. 2 (Tempo moderato) and No. 3 (Allegro) survive. Andrew Barnett has speculated as to the whereabouts of the lost first movement from the pre-Oceanides suite. Although it is likely the opening number was either misplaced or destroyed by the composer, Barnett argues that four pieces of "circumstantial evidence" indicate the movement has survived—albeit in different form—as the tone poem The Bard, written in 1913 and revised the following year: 1. The first 26 (numbered) pages of the manuscript paper for the pre-Oceanides suite are missing; assuming the first page would have been reserved for the title, this means that the missing first movement likely consisted of 25 pages. Importantly, the fair copy of the final version of The Bard is about the same length (26 pages). 2. The orchestration of The Bard and the suite's surviving second and third movements are "virtually identical" to each other, employing a small orchestra "noticeably less extravagant" than either the D major or D major versions of The Oceanides. 3. Sibelius's publishers, Breitkopf & Härtel, thought The Bard sounded like the first movement of a suite rather than a stand-alone concert piece. Sibelius vacillated back and forth, at first agreeing to recast the piece as a "fantasy in two parts, or an Intrada and Allegro", and then as a triptych in June 1913, before deciding sometime around July or August that The Bard should remain as an independent composition. 4. The thematic material of the suite's second movement (which is not found in the final version of The Oceanides) is closely related to a piece for solo piano called Till trånaden (To Longing, JS 202). Assuming The Bard was inspired by Finnish poet J. L. Runeberg's poem of the same name (toward the end of his life, Sibelius denied any Runeberg connection), in the first volume of the poet's "Collected Works" the title Till trånaden appears a page or two after The Bard, supporting the idea of a link between The Bard and the suite. ## Discography Despite its "haunting beauty", The Oceanides has received fewer recordings than more famous Sibelius tone poems such as En saga, The Swan of Tuonela, and Tapiola. The first recording of The Oceanides was made in 1936 with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a performance that is noticeably quicker than average. The first recordings of the Yale version (7:25) and the pre-Oceanides suite (No. 2 Tempo moderato, 2:42; No. 3 Allegro, 4:35) are by Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the BIS label (BIS-CD-1445, Rondo of the Waves); both were recorded in January 2003. The album premiered to considerable acclaim. The Guardian's Andrew Clements labeled the record the best of 2003, noting that the early versions of The Oceanides permitted the listener to see "the mechanics of musical genius laid bare". In 2015, Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra recorded the Yale version of the tone poem (9:44) at Barbican Hall; this recording is available through BBC Music Magazine as of November 2019 (BBCMM441). ## Notes, references, and sources

No Way Out (2004)

World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view event

The 2004 No Way Out was the sixth No Way Out professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). It was held exclusively for wrestlers from the promotion's SmackDown! brand division. The event took place on February 15, 2004, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. The event is best remembered for its final match, which saw Eddie Guerrero defeat WWE Champion Brock Lesnar to win the title, his top wrestling achievement before his death in 2005. No Way Out grossed over US\$450,000 ticket sales from an attendance of approximately 11,000 and received 350,000 pay-per-view buys, and was instrumental in helping WWE increase its pay-per-view revenue by \$11.9 million compared to the previous year. Like the event, the DVD received favorable reviews. ## Production ### Background No Way Out was first held by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) as the 20th In Your House pay-per-view (PPV) in February 1998. Following the discontinuation of the In Your House series, No Way Out returned in February 2000 as its own PPV event, thus establishing it as the annual February PPV for the promotion. The 2004 event was the sixth event in the No Way Out chronology and was held on February 15 at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. While the previous year's event featured wrestlers from both the Raw and SmackDown! brands, the 2004 event featured wrestlers exclusively from the SmackDown! brand, which made it the first brand-exclusive No Way Out event. ### Storylines The event consisted of eight professional wrestling matches with wrestlers involved in pre-existing scripted feuds, and storylines. Wrestlers were portrayed as either villains or fan favorites as they followed a series of tension-building events, which culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. All wrestlers belonged to the SmackDown! brand – a storyline division in which WWE assigned its employees to a different program. After winning a 15-man Royal Rumble match on the January 29 episode of SmackDown!, Eddie Guerrero earned the right to challenge for the WWE Championship at No Way Out against the champion Brock Lesnar in a singles match. Outside the storyline with Guerrero, Lesnar was involved in a staged rivalry with Goldberg, a member of the Raw brand. The feud between Lesnar and Goldberg began at the Royal Rumble. Lesnar interfered in the Royal Rumble match attacking Goldberg, which caused Goldberg to be eliminated from the match. On January 26 and January 29 Goldberg and Lesnar conducted promos on respective episodes of Raw and SmackDown!, in which they insulted each other. On the February 2 episode of Raw, Sheriff Steve Austin gave Goldberg the option of attending No Way Out by giving him a front-row ticket. On the February 5 episode of SmackDown!, the storyline between Guerrero and Lesnar was enhanced when they began a brawl after an in-ring interview segment. On the February 5 episode of SmackDown!, General manager Paul Heyman scheduled a triple threat match between Big Show, Kurt Angle and John Cena for No Way Out. The winner of that match would face the WWE Champion at WrestleMania XX for the title. The rivalry continued to develop on the February 12 episode of SmackDown!, when Angle was scheduled to team with Guerrero to face Big Show and Lesnar, but was found unconscious backstage. Cena then replaced Angle in the match and defeated Big Show and Lesnar with Guerrero. In February, WWE Cruiserweight Champion Rey Mysterio produced "Crossing Borders", which was No Way Out's official theme song. In this storyline, Chavo Guerrero became jealous of the attention Mysterio garnered as a result of recording the song. Therefore, Heyman promoted a match between the two at No Way Out for the Cruiserweight Championship during the February 5 episode of SmackDown!. On the February 12 episode of SmackDown!, Mysterio was accompanied by Jorge Páez, a professional boxer and childhood friend of Mysterio who appeared in his "Crossing Borders" music video, to his match against Tajiri. Mysterio defeated Tajiri but was attacked by Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero, Sr. after the match until Paez intervened and helped Mysterio. ## Event ### Sunday Night Heat Before the event began and aired live on pay-per-view, Tajiri, Sakoda and Akio defeated Último Dragón, Billy Kidman, and Paul London in a 6-Man Tag Team Match on Sunday Night Heat. ### Main Show After Sunday Night Heat, the pay-per-view began with a handicap match that saw the WWE Tag Team Champions Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty defend their titles against Basham Brothers (Doug Basham and Danny Basham) and Shaniqua. During the match Hotty attempted a worm on Shaniqua, but Shaniqua countered by clotheslining Hotty. The challengers had the advantage until Hotty clotheslined the Bashams, causing them to flip over the top ring rope and into ringside. Afterwards, Rikishi delivered a Samoan drop. Rikishi then covered Shaniqua to retain the championships. Next was a singles match, in which Jamie Noble was blindfolded as he faced his storyline girlfriend Nidia. Nidia would take advantage of Noble's inability to see by performing antics that caused him to fall. Eventually, Noble was able to apply the guillotine choke on Nidia. Noble won the match after he forced her to submit with this move. The third contest was a tag team match, in which World's Greatest Tag Team (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas) faced the APA (Bradshaw and Faarooq). At one point, Bradshaw performed a clothesline on Haas. Benjamin then delivered a superkick to Bradshaw and pinned him to gain the win for his team. After the match, Goldberg was seen arriving at the arena and being escorted to his seat by arena security. In the ring, SmackDown! General Manager Paul Heyman gave a promotional in-ring segment on how SmackDown! was the better program over Raw. Brock Lesnar would come down to the ring to promote his match and to insult Goldberg. As part of the storyline, Goldberg immediately jumped over the barricade into the ring, where Lesnar performed a spear on Goldberg. However, he recuperated and delivered a Jackhammer to Lesnar. Goldberg was then escorted out of the arena by security. This altercation was followed by a match between Hardcore Holly and Rhyno. Before the match began, Holly and Rhyno brawled on the entrance ramp, before they entered the ring. Once there, Holly executed a superplex, though, as they recuperated, Rhyno delivered a Gore that caused Holly to roll out of the ring. Afterwards, Holly delivered an Alabama slam for the pinfall. In the fifth match Rey Mysterio (managed by Jorge Páez), defended his WWE Cruiserweight Championship against Chavo Guerrero (managed by his father Chavo Guerrero, Sr.) During the fight, Mysterio performed a 619 on Guerrero, leading to an attack by Paez on Guerrero, Sr. The referee ordered Paez backstage. Both fighters wrestled inconclusively until Mysterio delivered a second 619. During the second sequence of the move, Guerrero grabbed Mysterio's legs and achieved a position with his shoulders spread so as to win both a pinfall and the WWE Cruiserweight title. The following match was the triple threat match between Big Show, John Cena and Kurt Angle, with the winner facing the WWE Champion at WrestleMania XX. For the duration of the match, The Big Show, who stood at 7 feet 2 inches (2.18 m) and weighed 500 pounds (230 kg), used his body size to his advantage as he squashed, or easily and quickly performed moves on, Cena and Angle. Thereafter, Cena delivered an FU, while Angle threw Big Show out of the ring with an Angle Slam. Angle then applied an ankle lock on Cena, forcing him to submit. As a result, Angle won a WWE Championship match at WrestleMania XX. The main event featured Brock Lesnar defending the WWE Championship against Eddie Guerrero. Lesnar used his size advantage over Guerrero throughout the match. As Lesnar attempted an F-5, he knocked down the referee. Lesnar then attempted to take advantage of the referee's state, as he went to retrieve the WWE title belt to hit Guerrero. Meanwhile, Goldberg came down into the ring and delivered a spear to Lesnar. As Goldberg retreated, Guerrero countered Lesnar's second F5 into a DDT on the title belt while the referee regained consciousness. Guerrero kicked the belt out of the ring to prevent the referee from seeing it and performed his Frog splash to pin Lesnar and win the WWE Championship from him. ## Reception The Cow Palace arena usually can accommodate 13,000, but the capacity was reduced to 11,000 for No Way Out 2004. This event grossed over \$450,000 from an approximate attendance of 11,000 which was the maximum allowed. It also received 350,000 pay-per-view buys. No Way Out helped World Wrestling Entertainment earn \$43.7 million in revenue from pay-per-view events versus \$31.8 million the previous year; Linda McMahon, then CEO of WWE, confirmed this statement on June 21, 2004, in a quarterly financial report. The event received mostly positive reviews. Canadian Online Explorer's professional wrestling section described the event as "Smackdown! us our money's worth last night but they also set up what's probably going to be the best match at Wrestlemania." Kevin Sowers from PWTorch described the main event between Eddie Guerrero and Brock Lesnar as "one to remember for a long time." The event was released on DVD on March 16, 2004. After its release, the DVD received a rating of 8.5 out of 10 points by IGN. ## Aftermath At WrestleMania XX, Eddie Guerrero defeated Kurt Angle via pinfall and retained the WWE Championship. John "Bradshaw" Layfield (JBL), portraying a new character after the semi-retirement of his tag team partner Faarooq, challenged Guerrero for the WWE Championship and defeated him at The Great American Bash to win the title. Guerrero failed to recapture the title from JBL in a steel cage match on the July 15 episode of SmackDown!. After Guerrero's death in November 2005, WWE held tribute shows on Raw and SmackDown! During these programs, No Way Out was the main highlight of Guerrero's career, as it was where he won his only world championship. John Cena began a rivalry with Big Show over his WWE United States Championship and, at WrestleMania, Cena defeated Big Show to win the title. Goldberg and Lesnar continued their rivalry, leading to a match promoted at WrestleMania, in which Goldberg defeated Lesnar. After their match, Goldberg and Lesnar left the company, although Lesnar would make his return in April 2012 and Goldberg made his return in October 2016. Rey Mysterio and Chavo Guerrero's storyline over the WWE Cruiserweight Championship also continued, culminating in a battle royal match at WrestleMania XX involving other wrestlers. Guerrero last eliminated Mysterio to retain his title in this match. After the Draft Lottery, a mock sports draft lottery in which wrestlers switched programs, Rico was drafted to SmackDown!, while Shelton Benjamin was drafted to Raw, in the process splitting up The World's Greatest Tag Team. Afterward, Charlie Haas and Rico won the WWE Tag Team Championship from Rikishi and Scotty 2 Hotty on the April 22 episode of SmackDown!''. ## Results

The Birds (Alexander McQueen collection)

Fashion collection

The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995) is the fifth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. The Birds was inspired by ornithology, the study of birds, and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, for which it was named. Typically for McQueen in the early stages of his career, the collection centred around sharply tailored garments and emphasised female sexuality. McQueen had no financial backing, so the collection was created on a minimal budget. The runway show for The Birds was staged on 9 October 1994, during London Fashion Week. The venue was a warehouse in the London district of King's Cross best known for hosting raves. Like his previous professional shows, The Birds was styled with imagery of violence and death; some models were covered in tyre tracks and others wore white contact lenses. Corsetier Mr. Pearl – McQueen's first male model – appeared in a pencil skirt and tailored jacket. Reception was generally positive, although the extreme styling drew accusations of misogyny. Many of the people who worked on The Birds with McQueen would go on to become longtime collaborators. The success of the show allowed McQueen to secure the financial backing to stage his next show, Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995), the collection which effectively made his name. Garments from The Birds appeared in both stagings of the retrospective exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. ## Background British designer Alexander McQueen was known in the fashion industry for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs, and dramatic fashion shows. He began his career in fashion as an apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter. His work on Savile Row earned him a reputation as an expert tailor. In September 1990, at the age of 21, he was accepted to the masters-level course in fashion design at Central Saint Martins (CSM), a London art school. McQueen met a number of his future collaborators at CSM, including Simon Ungless. He graduated with his master's degree in fashion design in 1992. His graduation collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who became his mentor and his muse. McQueen's reputation for shocking runway shows began early. The sexualised clothing and aggressive styling in his first professional show, Nihilism (Spring/Summer 1994), was described by The Independent as a "horror show". The follow-up, Banshee (Autumn/Winter 1994), featured a model pretending to put a finger in her vagina on the runway. McQueen had no financial backing at the beginning of his career, so his collections were created on minimal budgets. He purchased whatever cheap fabric or fabric scraps were available. Collaborators often worked for minimal pay or were paid in garments. Some agreed to work for free because they were interested in working with McQueen, while others who had been promised compensation were simply never paid. Many actually wound up paying out of pocket for things like fabric and notions. McQueen was so poor at the time of The Birds that he had to borrow money to pay for a cab to get to the show. ## Concept and creative process The Birds had multiple layers of inspiration. The greatest part came from ornithology, the study of birds, and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, for which it was named. McQueen was a film buff and many of his collections were inspired by his favourites. The Birds also referenced the mathematically inspired art of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, who used birds and other animals as tiles in artistic tessellations. Car accidents and roadkill served as an additional inspiration. Ungless designed a print of tyre tracks to be used on many of the garments, suggesting scenes in The Birds where the characters flee the attacking birds in cars. According to Ungless, the design echoed the rationale behind McQueen's use of dead locusts on garments in his earlier collection Nihilism: "Complete chaos and human vulnerability in the face of nature gone wrong". Fleet Bigwood, a CSM lecturer, contributed to fabric design. Fashion designer Andrew Groves, whom McQueen dated from 1994 to 1996, worked on the collection after McQueen found out Groves could sew. McQueen enlisted Ungless to create printed fabric based on Escher's designs, and Ungless, then a print technician at CSM, stole fabric from the school to use as a base. Ungless laid out a concept based on McQueen's request to have a print with "garden birds", but described the result as "awful – like a Christmas card gone wrong". Groves was asked to replace it, coming up with a print of black silhouettes of swallows in flight, a popular motif in classic skinhead subculture and nautical tattoos, representing endurance and courage. The print most prominently appeared on Look 33, on a burnt orange jacket, and Look 43, on an orange-red pencil skirt. It also appeared on a white frock coat, the show's final ensemble. Fashion historian Alistair O'Neill saw the print as depicting swallows mid-dive, which he believed was a reference to a scene in Hitchcock's film where birds invade a home by diving down the chimney. Many of McQueen's designs for The Birds, particularly the tight pencil skirts and wasp-waisted jackets, emulated the tightly tailored 1950s fashion worn by the film's star, Tippi Hedren, although he avoided directly copying her outfit. Ungless described McQueen as fascinated by the way Hedren was made vulnerable by her constricting clothing, and sought to take the effect to an extreme. Some models found the garments difficult to walk in on the runway. Despite the extensive presence of tailoring, Groves later suggested that McQueen's time as a theatrical costumier had more influence on this collection than his time on Savile Row. McQueen's bumsters, an extremely low-cut trouser that exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft, made an appearance in several outfits, including in wet-look black for Look 43. McQueen often designed spontaneously, right on the dressmaker's dummy, and did so for many of the looks in The Birds. Groves described watching him create an entire dress on the stand in approximately an hour, working from raw materials, without any realisation that this was a highly unconventional method. Look 35, a dress made of clear pallet wrap, was created in a similar fashion. It was inspired by a sexual encounter Groves had years earlier, in which the other man wrapped Groves in pallet wrap, immobilising him. Some weeks after Groves told McQueen about the incident, the two were walking on the street when McQueen spotted a discarded bolt of pallet wrap and took it home to make a dress that night. ## Runway show The runway show was staged on 9 October 1994 during London Fashion Week. The venue was Bagley's, a warehouse in the London district of King's Cross. Bagley's was known for hosting raves, and was allegedly owned by British organised crime. McQueen was able to secure the use of the warehouse for only £500. The show's invite was a black and white photograph of a baby bird lying on a roadway, apparently run over. Jewellery designer Simon Costin had asked to do the set design in exchange for also lending accessories for the show. McQueen readily agreed, especially since Costin offered to work for free and the show's budget was, as Costin later put it, "something like fifty pounds". Because of the limited budget, the set was kept simple: a black backdrop and a straight black concrete runway with white slashes meant to look like road markings, inspired by the tyre tread pattern found on some of the clothing. Models entered through a short backlit tunnel at the rear of the stage. McQueen found a stylist to help him oversee the models' looks for the runway show: Katy England, then working for British magazine Dazed & Confused. As with Costin, England also had no experience in the role; McQueen selected her based on having seen her at shows in stylish outfits. In addition to her styling duties, she also served as a fit model for many of the garments. England added a few outside garments for the runway show, including leather jackets. The styling for the models was explicitly sexual, with many runway looks exposing underwear or bare breasts. One look consisted solely of a silver lamé jacket over lace underwear. Look 35, the clear pallet wrap dress, was worn with nothing but black bikini underwear, and the model's upper thighs were tied with string to create a pencil skirt effect. The models wore stiletto heels attached to their feet with packing tape; these were simply cheap shoes bought from charity shops with the uppers removed to leave only the soles and heels. The accessories Costin supplied included pieces made from jet, enamel, and cockerel feathers, including one black feathered dickey worn over a gold shift dress. Makeup was styled by artist Val Garland, and was kept light: skin was pale and lips were orange-red. Eugene Souleiman styled hair, with McQueen requesting a look of "destruction". Souleiman opted not to emulate Hedren's iconic bouffant updo, as McQueen would have found the visual homage "too obvious". Souleiman decided to have the models' hair blow-dried straight and the ends crimped to fluffiness, creating a floating effect while they walked the runway. Just before the show, McQueen decided to add tyre tracks to some of the models to make it look as though they had been run over. They used a tyre from his assistant's car, covered it in grease, and rolled it over the models before they got dressed. This effect is most clearly seen in Look 12, a frock coat worn with nothing but a pair of high-cut briefs. Some models were given opaque white full-eye contact lenses to give them a dehumanised look. These were custom-made at significant cost, paid for by Derek Anderson, a supporter of McQueen's from New York City who worked in public relations and helped fund many of McQueen's early projects. McQueen had generated a great deal of excitement about the show in the media, and there was a long queue to get in. The majority of the audience were fashion students and ravers, however – the fashion establishment was not yet interested in McQueen, and the few industry professionals who attended mostly did so at the behest of Isabella Blow. The tight budget did not allow for any security, and one of McQueen's public relations people had to manage the rowdy crowd. Both of McQueen's parents were in attendance, although his father – who was not entirely comfortable with McQueen's choice of career – turned up late, stayed at the back of the venue, and left without speaking to his son. The show started 90 minutes late. It ended with the audience on their feet screaming. Fashion writer Plum Sykes, then an assistant at British Vogue, modelled Look 33. She later recalled the experience as "Magic, mad, and marvelous!" Corsetmaker Mr. Pearl, who had met McQueen at a King's Cross club, walked the runway in Look 40, a tailored short jacket, shirt and tie, and tight red pencil skirt with the swallow print. His corset-trained waist was only 18 inches at the time. It was the first time McQueen had a male model walk in one of his shows. Mr. Pearl later called the experience boring and said he had never been paid, but that he was "pleased to have met" McQueen. Madonna was rumoured to have purchased the jacket modelled by Mr. Pearl, indicating that McQueen's work was attracting more attention. ## Reception Journalist Dana Thomas reports that the reviews were very positive, particularly with regards to McQueen's sharp tailoring. Both The Times and the Evening Standard called the show the "hottest ticket" of London Fashion Week that season. Writing for the Evening Standard, Alison Veness called the close-cut designs "sharp enough to draw blood". In a short review for The Globe and Mail, David Livingstone wrote that McQueen had "achieved heights of lowdown style", with "attitude anchored in skill". Women's Wear Daily highlighted the blatant sexuality and streetwear elements as well as McQueen's tailoring, stating that "McQueen can cut with the best of them". In an overview of British designers for Fashion Week, Iain R. Webb wrote that McQueen's "sense of the macabre has the international fashion set screaming for more". Other reviewers were not so uniformly impressed. Although Amy Spindler of The New York Times found the tailored jackets excellent and acknowledged that McQueen was generating the most discussion of any designer in London that season, she was critical of the tight pencil skirts and bumster trousers, saying "It is strange to see so talented a designer committed to the unwearable". Barbara Weiser, of the now-defunct Charivari boutique chain, attended the show and described the collection as unimaginative and uncreative. The show is regarded positively in retrospect. Fashion journalist Hamish Bowles described the show as "a revelation" in 1999. He revisited the collection in 2010 after McQueen's death, calling it the point that he realised McQueen's potential to change the status quo of fashion. In a 2015 retrospective, Vogue highlighted the aesthetic of destruction in the collection and noted it had been a recurring theme in McQueen's fashion throughout his career. ## Analysis Much of the critical analysis of The Birds revolves around the depiction of women as apparent victims of violence, especially in light of the sexualised styling of the clothing. The show drew accusations that the presentation was misogynistic, not for the first or the last time in McQueen's career. McQueen objected to this characterisation, saying: "I don’t want women to look all innocent and naive, because I know what can happen to them. I want women to look stronger." Ungless stated that McQueen's object was depicting a beautiful woman "put at extreme risk but winning in the end". Fashion historian Caroline Evans positioned the extreme styling of The Birds as typical of independent British fashion designers in the 1990s. At the time, the industry was poorly supported and funding was scarce. Young designers took to creating shocking runway shows to generate press coverage in the hopes of attracting backers. Evans suggests that once McQueen found sufficient backing, he pivoted the styling of his shows from violent to theatrical. Diana Villanueva Romero analysed the collection from an ecofeminist perspective, arguing that although McQueen had previously presented women as victims of violence, it was only with The Birds that McQueen had "for the first time, situated women as substitutes for animal victims". In her view, McQueen was presenting a connection between the cruelty suffered by both women and animals in order to denounce this violence. In an opinion piece for Fangoria, author Vanessa Guerrero argued that McQueen's presentation in The Birds subverted the 1960s aesthetic by making the models "less the standard chic, pretty little things, and more things to dread". Guerrero believed the indicia of violence – torn clothes, white eyes, and tyre tracks – made the models intimidating, and therefore showed that McQueen was positioning women as empowered survivors rather than as powerless victims. Alistair O'Neill focused on the collection as it related to Hitchcock. McQueen referenced several of the director's films throughout his career, exploring what O'Neill called "representations of femininity and how they are challenged through transformation scenes". For O'Neill, the reappearance of the swallows print on the skirt worn by Mr. Pearl was McQueen's way of "translating femininity through artifice from one body to another". He argued that by having a man walk in a womenswear show wearing womenswear, McQueen was disrupting the "ordered sense of femininity" typical of catwalk shows. ## Legacy Following the show, Italian fashion manufacturer Eo Bocci offered to purchase 51% of McQueen's label for £10,000. McQueen refused, as he wanted to retain control of the company. Instead, they agreed on a pair of related contracts: the first gave Bocci distribution rights for McQueen's label for the next fifteen years, and the second made Bocci responsible for arranging manufacturing for McQueen. Bocci would source Italian garment manufacturers to produce McQueen's clothes for retail. The money from the deal with Bocci gave McQueen the funding to stage his next show, Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995), the collection which effectively made his name. Many of the people who worked on The Birds went on to become regular collaborators. Stylist Katy England, who worked with McQueen until 2007, became known as his "second opinion". Simon Ungless worked on prints for later collections, including Highland Rape and Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996). Simon Costin worked with McQueen regularly until the designer's death in February 2010. Val Garland styled makeup for several future shows, including The Dance of the Twisted Bull (Spring/Summer 2002) and In Memory of Elizabeth How, Salem 1692 (Autumn/Winter 2007). Eugene Souleiman returned to style hair for Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003) and The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006), among others. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City owns the orange jacket from Look 33. It appeared in both stagings of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, at the Met in 2011 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015. It also appeared in the Met's 2016 exhibit Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion. A tyre track print was used again for Look 63 of Bellmer La Poupeé (Spring/Summer 1997). Birds, wings, and feathers were a recurring theme in McQueen's work throughout his career, particularly in La Dame Bleue (Spring/Summer 2008), whose stage was illuminated by giant blue neon wings, and The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), which featured women in feathered dresses and a reworked version of the swallows print from The Birds. Cinema also remained a significant influence; future collections such as Deliverance (Spring/Summer 2004) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (Autumn/Winter 2005) took direct visual cues from the films which inspired them. One look from The Man Who Knew Too Much is a clear duplicate of Tippi Hedren's outfit from The Birds, a reference he had avoided making in the eponymous collection.

Allah jang Palsoe

Play written by Kwee Tek Hoay

Allah jang Palsoe (; Perfected Spelling: Allah yang Palsu; Malay for The False God) is a 1919 stage drama from the Dutch East Indies that was written by the ethnic Chinese author Kwee Tek Hoay based on E. Phillips Oppenheim's short story "The False Gods". Over six acts, the Malay-language play follows two brothers, one a devout son who holds firmly to his morals and personal honour, while the other worships money and prioritises personal gain. Over more than a decade, the two learn that money (the titular false god) is not the path to happiness. Kwee Tek Hoay's first stage play, Allah jang Palsoe was written as a realist response to whimsical contemporary theatres. Though the published stageplay sold poorly and the play was deemed difficult to perform, Allah jang Palsoe found success on the stage. By 1930 it had been performed by various ethnic Chinese troupes to popular acclaim and pioneered a body of work by authors such as Lauw Giok Lan, Tio Ie Soei, and Tjoa Tjien Mo. In 2006 the script for the play, which continues to be performed, was republished with updated spelling by the Lontar Foundation. ## Plot Brothers Tan Kioe Lie and Tan Kioe Gie are preparing to leave their Cicuruk home to find work: Kioe Lie will go to Bandung, while Kioe Gie will go to Batavia (now Jakarta) and become a letter-setter. As they are packing, Kioe Lie's fiancée Gouw Hap Nio visits. She leaves some snacks with their father, the poor farmer Tan Lauw Pe, before going home, promising to take care of Pe while his sons are away. The brothers finish packing, say goodbye to their father, and head for the train station. Three years later, Kioe Lie visits his brother in the latter's Batavia home. Kioe Gie has become an editor of the newspaper Kamadjoean and is known as a generous philanthropist. Kioe Lie, meanwhile, has become the manager of a tapioca factory, but is planning to leave for competing business run by Tjio Tam Bing, who has offered him twice the salary. Kioe Gie asks him to reconsider, or at least not take any customers, but Kioe Lie is set on his goals. Before Kioe Lie leaves, the brothers discuss marriage: since Kioe Lie has no intent to marry Hap Nio soon, Kioe Gie asks permission to marry first. Though Kioe Lie disapproves of Kioe Gie's sweetheart, a poor orphan girl named Oeij Ijan Nio, he agrees. Another four years pass, and Kioe Gie has become editor-in-chief of Kemadjoean and married Ijan Nio. He is concerned, however, over the newspaper's new political orientation: the owner, Oeij Tjoan Siat, is aiming to make the paper pro-Dutch East Indies, a stance that Kioe Gie considers a betrayal to the ethnic Chinese. When Tjoan Siat comes to Kioe Gie's home to ask him to follow the former's new political leanings, heavily influenced by a monthly payment of 2,000 gulden offered by an unnamed political party, Kioe Gie refuses and resigns. During the following week Kioe Gie and his wife sell their belongings and prepare to move back to Cicuruk. This departure is delayed by a visit from Kioe Lie, who reveals that he will be marrying Tam Bing's widow Tan Houw Nio – Tam Bing having died the year before. Kioe Gie is horrified, both because the widow has the same surname and because Kioe Lie had promised their father on his deathbed to marry Hap Nio. After an extensive argument, Kioe Lie disowns his brother and leaves. Five years later, Kioe Lie and Houw Nio's marriage is failing. Owing to poor investments (some made with embezzled money), Houw Nio's gambling, and Kioe Lie's keeping of a mistress, they have lost their fortune. Kioe Lie tries to convince his wife to sell her jewellery, thus allowing him to return the stolen money. Houw Nio, however, refuses, tells him to sell the house and his mistress' jewellery, and then leaves. Soon afterwards, Kioe Lie's friend Tan Tiang An warns him that he will be arrested by the police unless he flees the colony. Together they rent a car and Kioe Lie heads for the port at Batavia. Passing through Cicuruk, the car breaks down and, while the chauffeur attempts to fix it, Kioe Lie takes shelter in a nearby home. He learns that it belongs to Kioe Gie and Hap Nio, who have built up a vast farm, garden, and orchard that provide them with ample income. The two philanthropists are friends with the area's elite, and Hap Nio is happily married to a rich plantation administrator. When Kioe Gie and his companions return from playing tennis, they discover Kioe Lie hiding shamefully under a piano. Kioe Lie admits that he was wrong to be greedy. When a police officer arrives, Kioe Lie confesses to poisoning Tam Bing, then runs outside and shoots himself. ## Characters - Tan Lauw Pe, a poor farmer - Tan Kioe Lie, eldest son of Tan Lauw Pe - Tan Kioe Gie, second son of Tan Lauw Pe - Oeij Ijan Nio, wife of Tan Kioe Gie - Gouw Hap Nio, fiancée of Tan Kioe Lie and later wife of Khouw Beng Sien - Tan Houw Nio, wife of Tan Kioe Lie - Khouw Beng Sien, administrator of the Goenoeng Moestika plantation - Oeij Tjoan Siat, owner of the newspaper Kemadjoean - Tan Tiang An, a Mayor Cina - Saina, servant of Tan Houw Nio - Servants of Tan Kioe Lie and Tan Kioe Gie - Sado, a coachman - Chauffeur ## Writing Allah jang Palsoe was the first stage play by the journalist Kwee Tek Hoay. Born to an ethnic Chinese textile merchant and his wife, Kwee was raised in Chinese culture and schools that focused on modernity. By the time he wrote the drama, Kwee Tek Hoay was an active proponent of Buddhist theology. However, he also wrote extensively on themes relating to the native population of the archipelago and was a keen social observer. He read extensively in Dutch, English, and Malay, and drew on these readings after becoming a writer. According to the historian Nio Joe Lan, Allah jang Palsoe was the first stage drama in Malay by a Chinese writer. The six-act work was written in vernacular Malay, the lingua franca of the Indies, and was based on E. Phillips Oppenheim's short story "The False Gods". Though in his foreword Kwee Tek Hoay apologised for the quality of the stage play, writing that "the content and arrangement of this book are far from what you could call neat", Sumardjo praises his language, feeling that the story flowed well. At the time Allah jang Palsoe was written, stage performances were heavily influenced by orality. Contemporary theatres, such as bangsawan and stamboel, were unscripted and generally used fantastic settings and plotlines. Kwee Tek Hoay heavily disapproved of such whimsy, considering it "better to say things as they are, than to create events out of nothing, which although perhaps more entertaining and satisfying to viewers or readers, are falsehoods and lies, going against the truth". After condemning contemporary playwrights who merely wrote down existing stories, Kwee Tek Hoay expressed the hope that ultimately a unique form of Chinese Malay theatre—inspired by European theatrical traditions but dealing with Chinese themes—could be developed. Allah jang Palsoe was intended to be the first published stage play in this new tradition. Kwee Tek Hoay made numerous recommendations for the play's casting, costuming, setting, and music. He wrote that if sufficiently talented actors to portray Kioe Lie and Kioe Gie could not be found, "it would be better to not perform this show", and that Ijan Nio needed to show "a perfect woman or wife", as opposed to the "fierce and rough" Houw Nio. He provided four set designs, to be used at appropriate points in the plot, and gave suggestions for setting up the needed backgrounds and props. Kwee recommended that the play include only one song, John Payne and Henry Bishop's "Home! Sweet Home!", which was to be performed in the sixth act with either English or Malay vocals and a trio of piano, viola, and guitar or mandolin. ## Analysis The title Allah jang Palsoe is a reference to money, with an underlying didactic message that money is not everything in the world, and that an unquenchable thirst for it would turn one into "a money animal". Throughout the dialogue, money is referred to as the false God, with Lie as a character who deifies money to the point of ignoring his other duties and only realising his error after it is too late. Gie, although he does become rich, does not consider money a god, but is a philanthropist and holds to his morals. The Indonesian literary critic Sapardi Djoko Damono writes that such a message would have been popular among ethnic Chinese of the contemporary Indies, and as such the play would have been a favourite of social organisations. The Indonesian literary critic Jakob Sumardjo likewise notes money as the central issue of Allah jang Palsoe, writing that the play shows individuals doing anything to earn it—even sacrificing their values. He writes that the corrupting nature of money remains present in the best of times, and considers Kwee Tek Hoay's message to have been too heavily based in morality rather than considerations of social and human factors. As a result, he writes, readers are brought to understand the lust for money as a "human illness" which must be overcome: they should follow the example of Tan Kioe Gie, not Tan Kioe Lie. John Kwee of the University of Auckland, citing Gie's departure from Kamadjoean, suggests that this was a challenge directed at the Chinese Malay press, then becoming increasingly commercial. Allah jang Palsoe also contains themes unrelated to money. The sinologist Thomas Rieger notes the presence of a Chinese national identity, pointing to Gie as a young man "excelling in all Confucianist values", leaving his comfortable job rather than becoming an apologist for the Dutch colonial government to the detriment of his ethnic Chinese peers. Another sinologist, Myra Sidharta, looks at Kwee Tek Hoay's view of women. She writes that his depiction of an ideal woman was not yet fully developed in Allah jang Palsoe, though she finds Houw Nio to be a depiction of how a woman should not act: selfish and addicted to gambling. In a preface to his 1926 drama Korbannja Kong-Ek (The Victim of Kong-Ek), Kwee Tek Hoay wrote that he had drawn inspiration from the realist Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in that work, having read and reread the author's plays. Damono finds signs of Ibsen's influence already present in Allah jang Palsoe. He compares the stage directions in Allah jang Palsoe to those in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and finds them to be similar in their level of detail. ## Release and reception The script for Allah jang Palsoe was released by the Batavia-based publisher Tjiong Koen Bie in mid-1919. This edition included a foreword from the author, four illustrations of recommended stage decor, a number of performance guidelines, and a brief outline of the state of the theatre among the ethnic Chinese. Kwee Tek Hoay paid for this printing, a run of 1,000 copies, out of his own pocket and saw large financial losses. The stage play was republished in 2006, using the Perfected Spelling System, as part of the first volume of the Lontar Foundation's anthology of Indonesian stage dramas. Allah jang Palsoe was well received and broadly adopted. Troupes were allowed to perform the play as a charity opera, though proceeds were to go to the Tiong Hoa Hwe Koan [id] branch in Bogor. One performance is recorded as garnering 10,000 gulden. According to an advertisement, by 1930 the play had been performed "tens of times" and was popular with ethnic Chinese theatre troupes. Kwee Tek Hoay received numerous letters from fans of Allah jang Palsoe, spurring him to continue writing. Considering the play too difficult for native troupes to stage, when one such troupe, the Union Dalia Opera, requested permission to perform it, Kwee Tek Hoay instead wrote a new story for them. This later became his best-selling novel Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (The Rose of Cikembang). Another of Kwee Tek Hoay's stage dramas, Korbannja Kong-Ek, was inspired by a friend, who wrote him a letter asking for another comforting and educational play after reading Allah jang Palsoe. In 1926 Kwee Tek Hoay wrote that, after Allah jang Palsoe, the quality of stage performances in the Indies had increased noticeably. Nio notes that the quantity of stage plays by ethnic Chinese authors likewise increased. Though not many were ultimately published, the body of work pioneered by Allah jang Palsoe included plays by Kwee Tek Hoay (Korbannja Kong-Ek, Mait Hidoep, Plesiran Hari Minggoe), Lauw Giok Lan (Pendidikan jang Kliroe), Tio Ie Soei (Jan Tio), and Tjoa Tjien Mo (Beng Lee Koen, Hsi Shih). Sumardjo writes that, though Allah jang Palsoe was published seven years before the Rustam Effendi's Bebasari (generally considered the first canonic Indonesian stage drama), Kwee Tek Hoay's writing shows all the hallmarks of a literary work. Though the drama is not considered part of the Indonesian literary canon, performances have continued into the 21st century. In May 2003, the Jakarta-based Mainteater [id] put on an abridged performance directed by E. Sumadiningrat. Another Jakarta-based troupe, Teater Bejana, has included it in their repertoire.

James B. Longacre

American portraitist and engraver (1794–1869)

James Barton Longacre (August 11, 1794 – January 1, 1869) was an American portraitist and engraver, and the fourth chief engraver of the United States Mint from 1844 until his death. Longacre is best known for designing the Indian Head cent, which entered commerce in 1859, and for the designs of the Shield nickel, Flying Eagle cent and other coins of the mid-19th century. Longacre was born in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, in 1794. He ran away to Philadelphia at age 12, where he became an apprentice in a bookstore. His artistic talent developed and he was released to apprentice in an engraving firm. He struck out on his own in 1819, making a name providing illustrations for popular biographical books. He portrayed the leading men of his day; support from some of them, such as South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, led to his appointment as chief engraver after the death of Christian Gobrecht in 1844. In Longacre's first years as a chief engraver, the Philadelphia Mint was dominated by Mint Director Robert M. Patterson and Chief Coiner Franklin Peale. Conflict between Longacre and the two men developed after Congress ordered a new gold dollar and double eagle, with both to be designed by Longacre. Peale and Patterson nearly had Longacre fired, but the chief engraver was able to convince Treasury Secretary William M. Meredith that he should be retained. Both Patterson and Peale left the Mint in the early 1850s, ending the conflict. In 1856, Longacre designed the Flying Eagle cent. When that design proved difficult to strike, Longacre was responsible for the replacement, the Indian Head cent, issued beginning in 1859. Other coins designed by Longacre include the silver and nickel three-cent pieces, the Shield nickel, the pattern Washington nickel, and the two-cent piece. In 1866–1867, he redesigned the coins of Chile. Longacre died suddenly on New Year's Day 1869; he was succeeded by William Barber. Longacre's coins are generally well-regarded today, although they have been criticized for lack of artistic advancement. ## Early life; private sector career James Barton Longacre was born on a farm in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on August 11, 1794. His mother Sarah (Barton) Longacre died early in his life; his father, Peter Longacre, was the descendant of early Swedish settlers of North America. When Peter Longacre remarried, his son found the home life intolerable, and James Longacre left home at the age of 12, seeking work in the nearby city of Philadelphia. He apprenticed himself at a bookstore; the owner, John E. Watson, took the boy into his family. Over the following years, Longacre worked in the bookstore, but Watson realized that the boy's skill was in portraiture. Watson granted Longacre a release from his apprenticeship in 1813 so that he could follow an artistic muse, but the two remained close, and Watson would often sell Longacre's works. Longacre became apprenticed to George Murray, principal in the engraving firm Murray, Draper, Fairman & Co. at 47 Sansom Street in Philadelphia. This business derived from the firm established by the Philadelphia Mint's first chief engraver, Robert Scot. Longacre remained at the Murray firm until 1819; his major work there was portraits of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock which were placed on a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence by publisher John Binns; the work cost Binns a total of \$9,000 (equal to \$ today). Also employed at the Murray firm from 1816 was the man who would be Longacre's predecessor as chief engraver, Christian Gobrecht. Longacre's work at the company gave him a good reputation as an engraver skilled in rendering other artists' paintings as a printed engraving, and in 1819, he set up his own business at 230 Pine Street in Philadelphia. Longacre's first important commission were plates for S.F. Bradford's Encyclopedia in 1820; an engraving of General Andrew Jackson by Longacre based on a portrait by Thomas Sully achieved wide sales. Longacre then agreed to engrave illustrations for Joseph and John Sanderson's Biographies of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, published in nine volumes between 1820 and 1827. Although the venture was marked by criticism of the writing, sales were good enough that the project was completed. Numismatic writer Richard Snow suggests that the books sold on the strength of the quality of Longacre's illustrations. Longacre also completed a series of studies of actors in their roles in 1826 for The American Theater. With lessons learned from the Sanderson series, Longacre proposed to issue his own set of biographies illustrated with plates of the subjects. He was on the point of launching this project, having invested \$1,000 of his own money (equal to \$ today) in preparation, when he learned that James Herring of New York City was planning a similar series. In October 1831, he wrote to Herring, and the two men agreed to work together on The American Portrait Gallery (later called the National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans), published in four volumes between 1834 and 1839. Herring was an artist, but much of the work of illustrating fell to Longacre, who traveled widely in the United States to sketch subjects from life. He again sketched Jackson, who was by now president, as well as former president James Madison, both in July 1833. He met many of the political leaders of the day, who were impressed by his portraits. Among these advocates was the former vice president, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun. In July 1832, Niles' Register described a Longacre engraving, "one of the finest specimens of American advancement in the art". Longacre had married Eliza Stiles in 1827; between 1828, when their daughter Sarah was born, and 1840, they had three boys and two girls. Sales of the Gallery lagged due to the Panic of 1837; Longacre was forced to declare bankruptcy and travel through the southern and midwestern states, peddling his books from town to town, with his wife and elder daughter managing shipping and finances at home. Later in 1837, he was able to return to Philadelphia and open a banknote engraving firm with partners, Toppan, Draper, Longacre & Co. With great demand for engraving for notes being issued by state banks, the firm prospered, and had offices at 60 Walnut Street in Philadelphia and a branch at 1 Wall Street in New York. According to Snow, Longacre was known as the best engraver in the country. ### Longacre engravings, 1819–1844 ## Chief engraver (1844–1869) ### Appointment Gobrecht's death in July 1844 left the United States Bureau of the Mint (the "Mint") without a chief engraver. Among those who hoped for appointment were Philadelphia banknote engraver Charles Welsh, and Allen Leonard, who had modeled the Mint's medal for former president John Quincy Adams. Through the influence of Senator Calhoun, however, Longacre secured the appointment. According to coin historian Don Taxay, Longacre did not attempt to gain the support of Mint Director Robert M. Patterson in seeking the appointment from President John Tyler, and "if Patterson resented the slight, however, he was more annoyed by Leonard's importunities." Longacre was commissioned by President Tyler on September 16, 1844; his was a recess appointment as the post of chief engraver required Senate confirmation, and that body was not then sitting. Tyler transmitted Longacre's nomination to the Senate on December 17, 1844, which confirmed Longacre without recorded opposition on January 7, 1845. According to numismatist David Lange, Longacre was glad to get the position because engravers were receiving less work due to the advent of daguerrotype photography. According to coin dealer and author Q. David Bowers, upon appointment as chief engraver, Longacre "found that he had entered a hornet's nest of intrigue, politics, and infighting, dominated by Franklin Peale, chief coiner since 1839". Peale sent Mint personnel to work on his private residence, and in addition to his official duties—mostly performed by his predecessor, Adam Eckfeldt, who continued in his work without pay despite his retirement—he had a thriving side business preparing dies for private medals using government resources. Peale controlled access to dies and materials, and was close to Director Patterson; the two men later proved to have been skimming metal from bullion deposits. The remaining Mint officers were cronies of Patterson, and Longacre found himself a loner among them. Walter Breen, in his comprehensive volume on U.S. coins, suggests that Patterson resented Longacre because of the engraver's sponsorship by Calhoun, whom the director disliked as a southerner. ### Patterson/Peale years (1844–1853) In Longacre's first years as chief engraver, no original designs were required for coins. Gobrecht had redesigned every denomination of U.S. coinage between 1835 and 1842, and his successor had time to learn arts necessary for coin production that he had not needed as a maker of print engravings. These arts included coin design, making of punches for design elements, and die sinking. Longacre's work in the private sector had involved cutting lines into a copper plate which was then used to print reproductions. Patterson wrote in August 1845 to Treasury Secretary Robert J. Walker that Longacre "is a gentleman of excellent character, highly regarded in this community, and has acquired some celebrity as an engraver of copper; but he is not a Die-Sinker. Indeed I do not know that he has ever made an attempt in this art." By December of that year, the Mint director had written to Walker in praise of Longacre, stating that the engraver had "more taste and judgment in making devices for an improved coinage here than have been exhibited by any of his predecessors. He has shown too that he is quite competent to make the required model from his drawings." Taxay attributed Patterson's lavish praise of Longacre to continued attempts by Leonard to gain the post of chief engraver. A number of blunders can be seen among the early coins produced at the Mint under Longacre, though it is uncertain to whom these errors should be attributed. These include the 1844 half dollar struck at the New Orleans Mint (1844-O) with a doubled date, and the 1846 half dollar with the 6 overlying an identical digit, but one which had been placed horizontally. Bowers indicates that Longacre likely delegated such work, although in 1849 he wrote that his daily work was punching dates into working dies. Tom DeLorey, in his 2003 article on Longacre, notes that Peale and his staff often made punches without consulting the Engraver's Department (headed by Longacre), and believes the chief coiner more likely to be responsible. Despite the charged atmosphere at the Philadelphia Mint, Longacre avoided conflict with Patterson and Peale until March 1849, when Congress authorized a gold dollar and double eagle or twenty-dollar gold piece, both new coins. By then, Patterson had come to desire Longacre's departure as he was deemed a threat to Peale's medal business, and opposed new coins which would require the chief engraver's skills. According to Richard Snow in his book on Flying Eagle and Indian Head cents, "having an ethical chief engraver threatened their sideline." The conflict came over the use of the Contamin portrait lathe, necessary in the making of dies both for Longacre in producing the new coins and Peale in his medal business. When Longacre complained that Peale was monopolizing the device, Peale decided to sabotage Longacre's coin work and have him removed from his position. In early 1849, according to a letter written by Longacre the following year, the chief engraver was approached by a member of the Mint staff, warning him that another officer (plainly Peale) sought to have the engraving work done outside of the Mint, making Longacre redundant. The outside engraver in question was Frenchman Louis Bouvet, whom Patterson had prepare a design for the half eagle, though it was not adopted. Longacre's response to the information was to spend much of March 1849 preparing the dies for the gold dollar, at some cost to his health, as he later related. He demanded that Patterson hire assistance for him, but found the director willing only to have work contracted out. Longacre was unwilling to consent to this, as he could not supervise work done outside the Mint (he did get help within the Mint from assistant engraver Peter Filatreu Cross, who worked on the reverse of the gold dollar). Longacre proceeded with work on the double eagle through late 1849, and described the obstacles set in his path by Peale: > The plan of operation selected for me was to have an electrotype mould made from my model, in copper, to serve as a pattern for a cast in iron. The operations of the galvanic battery for this purpose were conducted in the apartments of the chief coiner. The galvanic process failed, my model was destroyed in the operation. I had, however, taken the precaution to make a cast in plaster ... From this cast, as the only alternative, I procurred [sic] a metallic one which, however, was not perfect; but I thought I should be able to correct the imperfections in the engraving of the die ... this was a laborious task, but seasonably completed, entirely by my own hand. The die then had to be hardened in the coining department; it unluckily split in the process. When Longacre completed the double eagle dies, they were rejected by Peale, who stated that the design was engraved too deeply to fully impress the coin, and the pieces would not stack properly. Taxay, however, noted that the one surviving 1849 double eagle displays no such problems, and by appearance would be level in a stack. Peale complained to Patterson, who wrote to Treasury Secretary William M. Meredith asking for Longacre's removal on December 25, 1849, on the ground he could not make proper dies. Patterson that day promised the position to engraver Charles Cushing Wright, effective when Longacre was ousted. Meredith questioned whether a competent replacement could be found; Patterson assured him that one could. Longacre objected to Patterson that Peale was delaying acceptance of revised double eagle dies, the director did not reply in writing, but met with Longacre, told him the administration had decided to terminate him, and that he should send in his resignation without delay. Longacre, after thinking the matter over, did not do so, but instead went to Washington on February 12, 1850, to meet with Meredith. He found that the secretary had been lied to about a number of matters. According to Snow, Longacre did not seek retribution, content to be allowed to continue his work in peace. The double eagle went into production in March 1850, though Patterson complained that the coins did not strike well. The double eagle quickly became the favored way to hold gold, and in the years to come more gold would be struck into double eagles than into all other denominations combined. Patterson wrote again to request Longacre's ouster on April 1, 1850, alleging that President Zachary Taylor had decided that Longacre be dismissed. Despite these attempts, Longacre remained in his position. Also in 1850, Longacre's wife Elizabeth (generally Eliza) died. The Mint officials clashed again in 1851, after Congress authorized a silver three-cent piece. Longacre prepared a design showing a star on one side and the Roman numeral III on the other, which initially won Patterson's approval. Peale, however, persuaded Patterson to change his mind and authorize the chief coiner to propose a version himself, copying design elements Gobrecht had used in 1836. The issue was submitted to the new Treasury Secretary, Thomas Corwin, who selected Longacre's proposal—Longacre had taken the precaution of sending the secretary a letter explaining his imagery. In July 1851, Patterson retired and President Fillmore replaced him with Thomas Eckert. Peale's medal business suffered a setback when Adam Eckfeldt, who was still performing the duties of chief coiner, died in 1852. In 1854, Mint Director James Ross Snowden fired Peale after the extent to which he had used Mint labor for private gain became public. Nevertheless, the firing caused considerable press attention, a Senate investigation, and a large demand for compensation by Peale. With his enemies gone, life at the Mint improved for Longacre. #### Early coins ### Prolific designer (1853–1863) Faced with a rise in silver prices, Congress decreased the silver content of the half dime, dime, quarter and half dollar in 1853. Longacre was asked to alter Gobrecht's designs so new coins could be distinguished from old. He proposed placing rays around the heraldic eagle on the reverses of the quarter and half dollar, and arrows by the date for all of the affected denominations. As the act requiring the reduction in weight allowed the Mint to hire outside artists to do the work, Snowden allowed for public designs for the new pieces. No public entry was found suitable, and Longacre's proposal was adopted. The rays tended to shorten die life and were dropped within a year; the arrows were dispensed with after 1855. In 1853, Congress authorized a three-dollar piece. In a note found among his papers, Longacre wrote that his task was to make the coin as easy as possible to distinguish from the quarter eagle, which at \$2.50 was close in value. Longacre produced a design for a Native American princess, which he made different from Gobrecht's Liberty design on the quarter eagle with a thinner and wider planchet. At the time, a female Native American was often used to represent America in art, and a depiction of Liberty as an Indian princess was in accord with contemporary practices. The chief engraver wrote to Mint Director Snowden that the three-dollar piece, which went into production in 1854, was the first time he had been allowed artistic freedom in designing a coin. The gold dollar was altered the same year to make the planchet both thinner and wider; Longacre modified his princess design for the gold dollar. For the reverse of the coins, Longacre created a wreath of wheat, corn, tobacco, and cotton, blending the agricultural products of the North and the South. This wreath would also be used on the reverse of the Flying Eagle cent in 1856; reused on the dime beginning in 1860, the "cereal wreath" would be Longacre's last surviving design on coinage, remaining with modifications until the 1916 abandonment of the Barber dime. In the mid-1850s, Longacre was engaged by the Navy Department to design a medal to be presented to Captain Duncan Ingraham. Longacre produced the imagery used for the reverse; the obverse was by Assistant Engraver Cross. Although Bowers describes Longacre as having been "strictly ethical in the duties of his office", when the Treasury Department learned that Longacre accepted a \$2,200 payment from the Navy for his work, they required that he repay the money under a federal law barring compensation of this kind. Other than his design for the 1867 Assay Commission medal, and his similar, wreathed reverses for the commission medals in 1860, 1861, and 1868, the Ingraham work was Longacre's only medal made for the government. After a rise in commodity prices, the Mint to sought to replace the large copper cent with a smaller version. Beginning in 1850, a number of pattern coins were struck in attempts to find a replacement coin. Designs and formats varied; at first, Mint authorities considered an annular, or holed, cent. In 1854 and 1855, much experimentation was done, some with a Liberty Head design as featured on the large cent; others with a flying eagle design adapted by Longacre from the Gobrecht dollar of 1836. Gobrecht's design said to have been modeled on Peter the eagle, a tame bird which frequented the Philadelphia Mint in the 1830s until it was caught up in machinery and killed; Peter, in stuffed form, was subsequently placed on exhibit at the Philadelphia Mint. The flying eagle design was adopted for a large issue of experimental patterns given to government officials and others in 1856; that coin was then used for the regular issue from 1857. The reverse featured Longacre's cereal wreath, which led to difficulties in coining; the head and tail of the eagle on the obverse opposed the wreath, making those design points particularly hard to strike in the tough copper-nickel alloy which was used. Beginning in 1859, the cent featured a Longacre design of Liberty wearing a Native American headdress. What is called the "laurel wreath", though actually olive, adorned the reverse of the cent in 1859; beginning in 1860, a reverse with an oak wreath and shield was placed on the cent. The replacement of the wreath is for reasons unknown; the shield was added because of Snowden's desire to give the coin a "more national character". This reverse is generally credited to Longacre; Snow speculates that it may have been created by Assistant Engraver Anthony C. Paquet. By numismatic legend, Longacre's Indian Head cent design was based on the features of his daughter Sarah; the tale runs that she was at the Philadelphia Mint one day when she tried on the headdress of one of a number of Native Americans who were visiting and her father sketched her. However, Sarah Longacre was 30 years old and married, not 12 as in the tale, in 1858 and Longacre himself stated that the face was based on a statue of Venus in Philadelphia on loan from the Vatican. James Longacre did often sketch his elder daughter, and there are resemblances between the depiction of Sarah Longacre and the various representations of Liberty on Longacre's coins of the 1850s. These tales were apparently extant at the time, as Snowden, in writing to Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb in November 1858, denied that the coin was based "on any human features in the Longacre family". Lee F. McKenzie, in his 1991 article on Longacre, notes that any artist can be influenced by many things, but calls the story "essentially false". #### Mid-tenure designs ### Civil War issues and later career The Civil War brought economic disturbances which resulted in the removal of some coins, including the base-metal cent, from circulation. Paper currency (valued as low as three cents), postage stamps, and private tokens, filled the gap. Many of the tokens were cent-sized, but thinner and made of bronze. Mint authorities took notice that these metal pieces were successfully circulating, and obtained legislation for a bronze cent. Longacre's Indian head design continued in its place with the new metal; later in 1864 he engraved his initial "L" in the headdress. The act which authorized the bronze cent also issued a two-cent piece; Longacre furnished a design, which Lange calls a "particularly attractive composition" with arrows and a laurel wreath flanking a shield. However, art historian Cornelius Vermeule stated that elements of the design "need only flanking cannon to be the consummate expressions of Civil War heraldry." Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase favored placing an expression of the nation's faith in God in a time of war on the coinage, and wrote to Mint Director Pollock, "You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest tersest terms possible this national recognition." Several mottos were considered by Pollock, including "God Our Trust" and "God and Our Country". Longacre's two-cent piece was the first coin inscribed with "In God We Trust". Nickel had been removed from the cent over the objection of Pennsylvania industrialist Joseph Wharton, who had large interests in the metal; his congressman, Thaddeus Stevens, had fought against the act. In 1864, Wharton published a pamphlet arguing for a coinage in which all coins less than ten cents would be made of a copper-nickel alloy with 25% nickel, just over twice the percentage which the cent had contained. In March 1865, Congress passed legislation for a three-cent coin of that alloy, intended to retire fractional currency of that denomination. Longacre furnished a head of Liberty for the coin resembling his other depictions of the goddess which he had made in the past 16 years; for the reverse he used the "laurel" wreath from the 1859 cent surrounding the Roman numeral III borrowed from the silver three-cent piece. Wharton and others seeking to promote the use of nickel remained powerful in Congress, and in 1866 secured authorization for a five-cent coin of copper nickel. Longacre prepared a number of designs; Pollock selected Longacre's design of a shield (similar to the two-cent piece) and a starry circle for the reverse, and the Shield nickel began to be struck that year. Mint Assayer William DuBois wrote to Longacre, "it is truly pleasing to see a man pass the life of three score and ten and yet be able to produce the same artistic works as in earlier days." In 1865 Congress required the use of "In God We Trust" on all coins large enough to bear the inscription; in 1866, Longacre added the motto to all silver coins larger than the dime and all gold coins larger than the three-dollar piece. He also in 1867 made modifications to the design of the copper-nickel five-cent piece, or nickel as it was coming to be known. In 1865, Longacre engaged British-born engraver William Barber as assistant; William H. Key was also made an assistant in 1864 and remained at the Mint past Longacre's death. Some of the coinage which had vanished from circulation during the Civil War and had been exported to South America continued to be used in Chilean trade as nationals found their local coinage valued poorly with the American pieces. In 1866, the Chilean government instructed its representative in Washington to approach the U.S. State Department for permission to have their coinage dies made in America. The Andrew Johnson administration was happy to oblige; Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch gave the Chileans a letter of introduction to Longacre in Philadelphia. Longacre was engaged by the Chileans to redesign five silver and four gold coins, and he agreed, so long as permission from McCulloch was obtained for him to accept an outside fee. McCulloch was initially agreeable, but Mint Director Pollock raised objection on the ground that government property should not be used to enable private gain. Eventually, all parties reached agreement that Longacre could do the work at a total cost of \$10,000 provided that he brought in an outside engraver to do some of the work under Longacre's supervision; the chief engraver selected Anthony C. Paquet, one of his former assistants. Resistance at the Mint dissolved with Pollock's resignation over President Johnson's Reconstruction policies, and the dies and hubs (from which more dies could be made) were created beginning in November 1866, probably in-house at the Philadelphia Mint. Longacre's designs for Chile were used until new ones were adopted in the 1890s. In 1867, Longacre proposed the use of aluminum in coins; this was rejected as the supply and price of the metal fluctuated considerably, and it then had a high intrinsic value. In 1868, Wharton's interests proposed making the dime into a copper-nickel piece and to modify the cent, three-cent piece, and nickel. The project was abandoned when it became clear the base-metal dime would be too large to be effectively struck in the tough copper-nickel alloy, but Longacre prepared a number of half dollar-size patterns. He also began work on re-engraving the designs of the gold pieces, and completed the \$10 piece by year's end. #### Later designs ## Death and assessment James Longacre died suddenly at his home in Philadelphia on January 1, 1869. A memorial meeting was held at the Philadelphia Mint on January 5, attended by the facility's employees. The Director of the Mint, Henry Linderman, delivered a speech in praise of Longacre prior to the formal eulogy, which was given by Longacre's assistant, William Barber, who would be appointed as Longacre's successor. Like each of his predecessors, Longacre died in office. Longacre was recognized in an exhibit of 100 notable American engravers sponsored by the New York Public Library in 1928. In 1970, art historian Cornelius Vermeule, in his volume on U.S. coins, viewed Longacre and his works less favorably, "uniform in their dullness, lack of inspiration, and even quaintness, Longacre's contributions to patterns and regular coinage were a decided step backwards from the art of [Thomas] Sully, [Titian] Peale, [Robert] Hughes, and Gobrecht" and "whatever his previous qualities as an engraver of portraits, he seems not to have brought much imagination to his important post at the Philadelphia Mint." However, Vermeule considered the Flying Eagle cent more of a work of art, far above the mundane. In his 1991 article, McKenzie notes Vermeule's concerns, but considers Longacre's work important for its use of American symbols, including the representations of Native Americans. He believes Longacre's use of such symbols influenced later coin designers, such as George T. Morgan, Victor D. Brenner, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. He particularly praises the ornate scroll on the reverse of the double eagle, calling it "unique in American numismatic art and enhances the elegance of a design befitting the highest-denomination U.S. coin", and applauds "the exciting innovation in symbolism and expression of national sentiment that he brought to U.S. numismatic art". According to Bowers, "Today, Longacre is widely admired by numismatists." Lange notes that Longacre's "artistic vision graced 60 years of American coins". Snow writes, > In view of the admiration that Saint-Gaudens, Vermeule, and others had for Longacre's "recycled" design borrowed from Gobrecht, and the enthusiasm collectors have for Flying Eagle cents today, perhaps it is all for the best that some other motif was not created in the 1850s at the Mint when experiments to eliminate the cumbersome large copper cent were conducted. ## U.S. coins designed by Longacre - Flying Eagle cent (1856–1858) - Indian Head cent (1859–1909) - Two-cent piece (1864–1873) - Three-cent piece in silver (1851–1873) and nickel (1865–1889) - Shield nickel (1866–1883) - Liberty Seated half dime reverse (1860–1873) - Liberty Seated dime reverse (1860–1891), reused with slight modification as reverse of Barber dime (1892–1916) - Liberty Head gold dollar (1849–1889) - Three-dollar piece (1854–1889) - Liberty Head double eagle (1849–1907)

Mariah Carey

American singer (born 1969)

Mariah Carey (/məˈraɪə/; born March 27, 1969) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. Referred to as the "Songbird Supreme" by Guinness World Records, she is noted for her songwriting, five-octave vocal range, melismatic singing style and signature use of the whistle register. An influential figure in popular music, Carey is credited for impacting the vocal style in contemporary music, merging hip-hop with pop music through her collaborations and popularizing the use of remixes. She has also been dubbed the "Queen of Christmas" for the enduring popularity of her holiday music, particularly the 1994 song "All I Want for Christmas Is You", which is the best-selling holiday song by a female artist. Carey rose to fame in 1990 with her eponymous debut album under the guidance of Columbia Records executive Tommy Mottola, who married her in 1993. She is the only artist to date to have their first five singles reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, from "Vision of Love" to "Emotions". Carey gained worldwide success with the albums Music Box (1993) and Daydream (1995) ― both of which rank among the best-selling albums and spawned several hit singles, including "Hero", "Without You", "Fantasy", "Always Be My Baby" and "One Sweet Day", which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 decade-end chart (1990s). After separating from Mottola, she adopted a new urban image and began incorporating hip-hop and R&B elements, with the release of Butterfly (1997). By the end of the 1990s, Billboard named her the most successful artist of the decade. She left Columbia in 2001 after eleven consecutive years of US number-one singles and signed a record deal with Virgin Records. Following Carey's highly publicized breakdown and the failure of the film Glitter (2001) and its soundtrack, Virgin bought out her contract and she signed with Island Records the following year. After a comparatively unsuccessful period, Carey returned to the top of the charts with one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). Its second single, "We Belong Together", topped the US Billboard Hot 100 decade-end chart (2000s). Her subsequent ventures included roles in the films Precious (2009), The Butler (2013), A Christmas Melody (2015), and The Lego Batman Movie (2017), being an American Idol judge, starring in the docu-series Mariah's World, performing at multiple concert residencies, and publishing the memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey (2020). Carey is one of the best-selling music artists, with over 220 million records sold worldwide, and is an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress and the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. She was ranked as the second greatest woman in music by VH1 in 2012 and the fifth greatest singer by Rolling Stone in 2023. Billboard named her the top-charting female solo artist, based on both album and song chart success. She holds the record for the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles by a solo artist (19), a female songwriter (18), and a female producer (15), spending a record 91 weeks atop the chart. Carey is the highest-certified female artist in the United States and 10th overall, with 74 million certified album units. Among her accolades are 5 Grammy Awards, 10 American Music Awards, 15 Billboard Music Awards, and 12 Guinness World Records. ## Early life Carey was born on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, New York. Her name is derived from the song "They Call the Wind Maria", originally from the 1951 Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon. She is the youngest of three children born to Patricia (née Hickey), a former opera singer and vocal coach of Irish descent, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer of African-American and Afro-Venezuelan lineage. The last name Carey was adopted by her Venezuelan grandfather, Francisco Núñez, after he emigrated to New York. Patricia's family disowned her for marrying a black man. Racial tensions prevented the Carey family from integrating into their community. While they lived in Huntington, their neighbors poisoned the family dog and set fire to their car. After her parents' divorce, Carey had little contact with her father, and her mother worked several jobs to support the family. Carey spent much of her time at home alone and began singing at age three, often imitating her mother's take on Verdi's opera Rigoletto in Italian. Her older sister Alison moved in with their father while Mariah and her elder brother Morgan lived with their mother. During her years in elementary school, she excelled in the arts, such as music and literature. Carey began writing poetry and lyrics while attending Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, where she graduated in 1987. Carey began vocal training under the tutelage of her mother. Though she was a classically trained opera singer, Patricia Carey never pressured her daughter to pursue a career in classical opera. Mariah Carey recalled that she had "never been a pushy mom. She never said, 'Give it more of an operatic feel.' I respect opera like crazy, but it didn't influence me." In high school, Mariah Carey was often absent because of her work as a demo singer. This led to her classmates giving her the nickname Mirage. Working in the Long Island music scene gave her opportunities to work with musicians such as Gavin Christopher and Ben Margulies, with whom she co-wrote material for her demo tape. After moving to New York City, she worked part-time jobs to pay the rent and completed 500 hours of beauty school. Carey moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan with four female students as roommates. She landed a gig singing backup for freestyle singer Brenda K. Starr. ## Career ### 1988–1992: Career beginnings, debut album and Emotions In December 1988, Carey accompanied Starr to a music executive's party, where she handed her demo tape to the head of Columbia Records, Tommy Mottola. After listening to the tape during the ride home, he immediately requested the driver turn around. Carey had already left the event, and in what has been described as a modern-day Cinderella story, he spent two weeks looking for her. Another record label expressed interest and a bidding war ensued. Mottola signed Carey to Columbia and enlisted producers Ric Wake, Narada Michael Walden, and Rhett Lawrence for her first album. Columbia marketed Carey as the main female artist on their roster, competing with Arista's Whitney Houston and Madonna of Sire Records. On June 5, 1990, Carey made her first public appearance at the 1990 NBA Finals, singing "America the Beautiful". The highlight was the piercing whistle note toward the song's conclusion, sparking CBS Sports anchor Pat O'Brien to declare, "The palace now has a queen." Columbia spent upwards of \$1 million promoting Carey's debut studio album, Mariah Carey. After a slow start, the album eventually topped the Billboard 200 for eleven consecutive weeks, after Carey's exposure at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards, where she won the award for Best New Artist, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for her single "Vision of Love". The album's singles "Vision of Love", "Love Takes Time", "Someday", and "I Don't Wanna Cry" all topped the US Billboard Hot 100. Mariah Carey was the best-selling album in the United States in 1991, and achieved worldwide sales of 15 million copies. The following year Carey co-wrote, co-produced and recorded her second studio effort, Emotions. Described by Carey as an homage to Motown soul music, Carey employed the help of Walter Afanasieff, who only had a small role on her debut, as well as Robert Clivillés and David Cole, from the dance group C+C Music Factory. Carey's relationship with Margulies deteriorated over a songwriting royalties dispute. After he filed a lawsuit against Columbia's parent company, Sony, the songwriting duo parted ways. Emotions was released on September 17, 1991. The title track, the album's lead single, became Carey's fifth chart topper on the Billboard Hot 100, making her the first artist whose first five singles reached the chart's summit. Though critics praised the album's content and described it as a more mature effort, the album was criticized as calculated and lacking originality. While the album managed sales of eight million copies globally, Emotions failed to reach the commercial and critical heights of its predecessor. Carey did not embark on a world tour to promote the album. Although she attributed this to stage fright and the vocally challenging nature of her material, speculation grew that Carey was a "studio worm" and that she was incapable of producing the perfect pitch and 5-octave vocal range for which she was known. In hopes of ending any speculation of her being a manufactured artist, Carey booked an appearance on MTV Unplugged. The show presented artists "unplugged" or in a stripped setting and devoid of studio equipment. Days prior to the show's taping, Carey and Afanasieff chose to add a cover of the Jackson 5's 1970 song "I'll Be There" to the set-list. On March 16, 1992, Carey played and recorded an intimate seven-song show at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York. The acclaimed revue was aired more than three times as often as the average episode, and critics heralding it as a "vocal Tour de force". Carey's live version of "I'll Be There" became her sixth number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Sony capitalized on its success and released it as an EP. It earned a triple-Platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and earned Gold and Platinum certifications in several European markets. ### 1993–1996: Music Box, Merry Christmas, and Daydream After Emotions failed to achieve the commercial heights of her debut album, Carey's subsequent release was to be marketed as adult contemporary and pop-friendly. Music Box was produced by Carey and Afanasieff, and began a songwriting partnership that would extend until 1997's Butterfly. The album was released on August 31, 1993, to mixed reviews from music critics. Carey's songwriting was derided as clichéd and her vocal performances were described as less emotive and lazier in their delivery. In his review of the album, AllMusic's Ron Wynn concluded: "sometimes excessive spirit is preferable to an absence of passion." In promotion of the album, Carey embarked on her debut tour, a six-date concert series, the Music Box Tour. Music Box's first and second singles, "Dreamlover" and "Hero", became Carey's seventh and eighth chart-toppers in the United States, while her cover of Badfinger's "Without You" was a commercial breakthrough in Europe, becoming her first number-one single in Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Music Box remains Carey's best-seller and one of the best-selling albums, with worldwide sales of over 28 million copies. In mid-1994, Carey recorded and released a duet with Luther Vandross; a cover of Lionel Richie and Diana Ross's "Endless Love". Merry Christmas, released on November 1, 1994, became the best-selling Christmas album, with global sales of over 15 million copies. The lead single, "All I Want for Christmas Is You", became a holiday standard and continues to surge in popularity each holiday season. By October 2017, it had become the 11th-bestselling single in modern music. In 2019, 25 years after the song's release, it finally peaked at number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, and it continued to do so every December since, becoming the first song in history to hold the top position in more than two different chart years, as well as the longest-running holiday number-one song (twelve weeks). Additionally, it is the longest running number-one song on the Billboard Holiday 100, spending 44 cumulative weeks, of the chart's 49 total weeks since the list launched in 2011. Carey's fifth studio album, Daydream, found her consolidating creative control over her career, leading to tensions with Columbia. The album featured a departure from her allegiance to pop and gravitated heavily towards R&B and hip hop. Critically, the album was described as Carey's best to date. The New York Times named it one of 1995's best albums and concluded: "[the album] brings R&B candy-making to a new peak of textural refinement ... Carey's songwriting has taken a leap forward and become more relaxed, sexier and less reliant on thudding clichés." The album's lead single, "Fantasy", became the first single by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and the second single, "One Sweet Day", a collaboration with R&B group Boyz II Men, remained atop the Billboard Hot 100 for a record-breaking 16 consecutive weeks, becoming, at the time, the longest-running number-one song in the history of the charts. The third single, "Always Be My Baby", became Carey's eleventh chart-topper, tying her with Madonna and Whitney Houston for the most number-one singles among female artists at the time. Daydream became Carey's biggest-selling album in the United States, and her second album to be certified Diamond by the RIAA, after Music Box. The album continued Carey's dominance in Asian music markets and sold in excess of 2.2 million copies in Japan alone and over 20 million copies globally. Daydream and its singles were nominated in six categories at the 38th Grammy Awards. Though considered a favorite to win the top awards of the evening, Carey was shut out, prompting her to comment "What can you do? I will never be disappointed again." In early 1996, she embarked on her first international string of concerts, the Daydream World Tour. Its seven dates spanned three in Japan and four throughout Europe. Forbes named Carey the top-earning female musician of 1996, collecting an estimated \$32 million. During the recording of Daydream, Carey also worked on the alternative rock album Someone's Ugly Daughter by the band Chick, contributing writing, production, vocals and art direction. As Columbia Records refused to release the album with her lead vocals, Carey's friend Clarissa Dane was brought in to become the face of Chick, and her vocals were layered on top of Carey's, masking her voice. Carey also directed the music video for the Chick song "Malibu". According to Carey, "I was playing with the style of the breezy-grunge, punk-light white female singers who were popular at the time ... I totally looked forward to doing my alter-ego band sessions after Daydream each night." Her contributions were secret until the release of her 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey. ### 1997–2000: New image with Butterfly, and Rainbow Carey's subsequent musical releases followed the trend that began with Daydream. Her music began relying less on pop and adult contemporary-tinged balladry and instead incorporating heavy elements of hip-hop and R&B. On Butterfly, Carey collaborated with a bevy of producers other than Afanasieff, such as Sean Combs, Q-Tip, Missy Elliott and Jean Claude Oliver and Samuel Barnes from Trackmasters. In mid-1997, after four years of marriage, Carey and Mottola separated. Carey described Mottola as increasingly controlling, and viewed her newfound independence as a new lease on life. In the booklet of her twelfth studio album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009), Carey wrote that she considers Butterfly her magnum opus and a turning point in both her life and career. Butterfly introduced a more subdued style of singing, with critics noting Carey's incorporation of breathy vocals. Some viewed her lack of propensity to use her upper range as a sign of maturity, while others questioned whether it forebode waning vocal prowess. The music video for the album's lead single, "Honey", her first since separating from Mottola, introduced a more overtly sexual image. Butterfly became Carey's best-reviewed album, with attention placed on the album's exploration of more mature lyrical themes. In their review of the album, Rolling Stone wrote "[It's] not as if Carey has totally dispensed with her old saccharine, Houston-style balladry ... but the predominant mood of 'Butterfly' is one of coolly erotic reverie." AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine described Carey's vocals as "sultrier and more controlled than ever," and felt the album "illustrates that Carey continues to improve and refine her music, which makes her a rarity among her '90s peers.'" "Honey" and "My All", the album's fifth single, both topped the Hot 100, making Carey a female artist with the most number-one singles in the chart's history. Though a commercial success, Butterfly failed to reach the commercial heights of her previous albums, Music Box and Daydream. After concluding her Butterfly World Tour, Carey participated in the VH1 Divas benefit concert on April 14, 1998, where she sang alongside Aretha Franklin, Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Gloria Estefan, and Carole King. Carey began conceptualizing a film project All That Glitters, later re-titled to simply Glitter (2001), and wrote songs for other projects, such as Men in Black (1997) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000). After Glitter fell into developmental hell, Carey postponed the project, and began writing material for a new album. Sony Music executives insisted she prepare a greatest hits collection in time for the holiday season. The album, titled \#1's (1998), featured a cover of Brenda K. Starr's "I Still Believe" and a duet with Whitney Houston, "When You Believe", which was included on the soundtrack for The Prince of Egypt (1998). \#1's became a phenomenon in Japan, selling over one million copies in its opening week, making Carey the only international artist to accomplish this feat. It sold over 3.25 million copies in Japan in its first three months on sale, and holds the record as the best-selling album by a non-Asian artist. With only one album left to fulfill her contract with Sony, and with a burning desire to separate herself professionally from the record label her ex-husband still headed, Carey completed the album in three months in mid-1999. Titled Rainbow, the album found Carey exploring with producers whom she had not worked with before. Rainbow became Carey's first album to not feature a collaboration with her longtime writing partner, Walter Afanasieff; instead she chose to work with David Foster and Diane Warren. "Heartbreaker" and "Thank God I Found You" both topped the Billboard Hot 100, while a collaboration with Irish boy band Westlife on the cover of Phil Collins' "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" became Carey's second number-one hit on the UK charts. Rainbow was released on November 2, 1999, to the highest first week sales of her career at the time, however debuting at number two on the Billboard 200. Carey's tense relationship with Columbia grew increasingly fractious; she began posting messages on her website, sharing inside information with fans on the dispute, as well as instructing them to request "Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme)" on radio stations. Ultimately, the song was only given a very limited and low-promotion release. Critical reception of Rainbow was generally positive, with the general consensus finding: "what began on Butterfly as a departure ends up on Rainbow a progression – perhaps the first compelling proof of Carey's true colors as an artist." Though a commercial success, Rainbow became Carey's lowest selling album at that point in her career. In April 9, 2000, Carey participated in another VH1 Divas concert, in a tribute to Diana Ross. ### 2001–2004: Personal and professional setbacks, Glitter and Charmbracelet Carey received Billboard's Artist of the Decade Award and the World Music Award for Best-Selling Pop Female Artist of the Millennium, and parted from Columbia Records. She signed an unprecedented \$80 million five-album recording contract with Virgin Records (EMI Records) in April 2001. Glitter was a musical departure, recreating a 1980s post-disco era to accompany the film, set in 1983. Carey was given full conceptual and creative control over the project. She said that Columbia had regarded her as a commodity, with her separation from Mottola exacerbating her relations with label executives. Carey's three-year relationship with Latin singer Luis Miguel ended. In July 2001, Carey suffered a physical and emotional breakdown. She began posting disturbing messages on her website, and behaved erratically in live promotional outings. On July 19, she made a surprise appearance on the MTV program Total Request Live (TRL). As the show's host Carson Daly began taping following a commercial break, Carey came out pushing an ice cream cart while wearing a large men's shirt, and began a striptease in which she revealed a tight ensemble. Days later, she posted irregular voice notes on her website: "I'm trying to understand things in life right now and so I really don't feel that I should be doing music right now. What I'd like to do is just a take a little break or at least get one night of sleep without someone popping up about a video. All I really want is [to] just be me and that's what I should have done in the first place ... I don't say this much but guess what, I don't take care of myself." Following the quick removal of the messages, Berger commented that Carey had been "obviously exhausted and not thinking clearly" when she posted the letters. On July 26, Carey was hospitalized due to exhaustion and a "physical and emotional breakdown". She was admitted to a hospital in Connecticut and remained under doctor's care for two weeks, followed by an extended absence from the public. Virgin Records and 20th Century Fox delayed the release of Glitter and its soundtrack. Critics panned Glitter and its soundtrack; both were unsuccessful commercially. The soundtrack became Carey's lowest-selling album to that point. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed it as "an absolute mess that'll go down as an annoying blemish on [her] career." She attributed the poor performance to her state of mind, its postponement and the soundtrack having been released on September 11. Carey's record deal with Virgin Records was bought out for \$28 million. She flew to Capri, Italy, for five months, where she wrote material for a new album. She described her time at Virgin "a complete and total stress-fest ... I made a total snap decision which was based on money and I never make decisions based on money. I learned a big lesson from that." She signed a contract with Island Records, valued at more than \$24 million, and launched the record label MonarC. Carey's father, Alfred Roy, with whom she had had little contact since childhood, died of cancer that year. In 2002, Carey was cast in the independent film WiseGirls alongside Mira Sorvino and Melora Walters, who co-starred as waitresses at a mobster-operated restaurant. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and received negative reviews, though Carey's performance was praised; Roger Friedman of Fox News described her as "a Thelma Ritter for the new millennium", and wrote, "Her line delivery is sharp and she manages to get the right laughs." In December 2002, Carey released her ninth studio album, Charmbracelet, which she said marked "a new lease on life" for her. Sales of Charmbracelet were moderate and the quality of Carey's vocals came under criticism. Joan Anderson from The Boston Globe declared the album "the worst of her career, and revealed a voice [that is] no longer capable of either gravity-defying gymnastics or soft coos", while AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote, "Mariah's voice is shot, sounding in tatters throughout the record. She can no longer coo or softly croon nor can she perform her trademark gravity-defying vocal runs." To support the album, Carey embarked on the Charmbracelet World Tour, spanning North America and East Asia over three months. The United States shows were booked in theaters. She described the show as "much more intimate so you'll feel like you had an experience. You experience a night with me." While smaller venues were booked throughout the tour's stateside leg, Carey performed in stadiums in Asia and Europe, playing for a crowd of over 35,000 in Manila, 50,000 in Malaysia, and to over 70,000 people in China. In the United Kingdom, it was her first tour to feature shows outside London, booking arena stops in Glasgow, Birmingham and Manchester. The tour garnered generally positive reviews, with many praising the production and the quality of Carey's vocals. ### 2005–2007: Resurgence with The Emancipation of Mimi Carey's tenth studio album, The Emancipation of Mimi, was produced with the Neptunes, Kanye West and Carey's longtime collaborator, Jermaine Dupri. She described the album as "very much like a party record ... the process of putting on makeup and getting ready to go out ... I wanted to make a record that was reflective of that." The Emancipation of Mimi topped the charts in the United States, becoming Carey's fifth number-one album and first since Butterfly (1997), and was warmly accepted by critics. Caroline Sullivan of The Guardian defined it as "cool, focused and urban [... some of] the first Mariah Carey tunes in years which I wouldn't have to be paid to listen to again," while USA Today's Elysa Gardner wrote, "The [songs] truly reflect the renewed confidence of a songbird who has taken her shots and kept on flying." The album's second single, "We Belong Together", became a "career re-defining" song for Carey, after a relatively unsuccessful period and a point when many critics had considered her career over. Music critics heralded the song as her "return to form," as well as the "return of The Voice," while many felt it would revive "faith" in Carey's potential as a balladeer. "We Belong Together" broke several records in the United States and became Carey's sixteenth chart topper on the Billboard Hot 100. After staying at number one for fourteen non-consecutive weeks, the song became the second longest running number one song in US chart history, behind Carey's 1996 collaboration with Boyz II Men, "One Sweet Day". Billboard listed it as the "song of the decade" and the ninth most popular song of all time. The song broke several airplay records, and according to Nielsen BDS, and gathered both the largest one-day and one-week audiences in history. During the week of September 25, 2005, Carey set another record, becoming the first female to occupy the first two spots atop the Hot 100, as "We Belong Together" remained at number one, and her next single, "Shake It Off", moved into the number two spot (Ashanti had topped the chart in 2002 while being a "featured" singer on the number two single). On the Billboard Hot 100 Year-end Chart of 2005, the song was declared the number one song, a career first for Carey. Billboard listed "We Belong Together" ninth on The Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs and was declared the most popular song of the 2000s decade by Billboard. The album was re-released as The Ultra Platinum Edition. The Emancipation of Mimi earned ten Grammy Award nominations: eight in 2006 for the original release, the most received by Carey in a single year, and two in 2007 for the Ultra Platinum Edition, from which "Don't Forget About Us" became her seventeenth number-one hit. Carey won Best Contemporary R&B Album and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song for "We Belong Together". The Emancipation of Mimi was the best-selling album in the United States in 2005, with nearly five million units sold. It was the first album by a solo female artist to become the year's best-selling album since Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in 1996. At the end of 2005, the IFPI reported that The Emancipation of Mimi had sold more than 7.7 million copies globally, and was the second-best-selling album of the year after Coldplay's X&Y. To date, The Emancipation of Mimi has sold over 12 million copies worldwide. In support of the album, Carey embarked on her first headlining tour in three years, named The Adventures of Mimi after a "Carey-centric fan's" music diary. The tour spanned 40 dates, with 32 in the United States and Canada, two in Africa, and six in Japan. It received warm reception from music critics and concert goers, many of which celebrated the quality of Carey's vocals. === 2008–2009: E=MC2, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, and Precious === In early 2007, Carey began to work on her eleventh studio album, E=MC2. Although the album was well received by most critics, some of them criticized it for being very similar to the formula used on The Emancipation of Mimi. Two weeks before the album's release, "Touch My Body", the record's lead single, reached the top position on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Carey's eighteenth number one and making her the solo artist with the most number one singles in United States history, pushing her past Elvis Presley into second place according to the magazine's revised methodology. Carey is second only to The Beatles, who have twenty number-one singles. Additionally, it gave Carey her 79th week atop the Hot 100, tying her with Presley as the artist with the most weeks at number one in the Billboard chart history." E=MC2 debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 463,000 copies sold, the biggest opening week sales of her career. In 2008, Carey also played an aspiring singer named Krystal in Tennessee and had a cameo appearance in Adam Sandler's film You Don't Mess with the Zohan, playing herself. Since the album's release, Carey had planned to embark on an extensive tour in support of E=MC2. However the tour was suddenly cancelled in early December 2008. Carey later stated that she had been pregnant during that time period, and suffered a miscarriage, hence she cancelled the tour. On January 20, 2009, Carey performed "Hero" at the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball after Barack Obama was sworn as the first African-American president of the United States. On July 7, 2009, Carey – alongside Trey Lorenz – performed her version of The Jackson 5 song "I'll Be There" at the memorial service for Michael Jackson. In 2009, she appeared as a social worker in Precious, the movie adaptation of the 1996 novel Push by Sapphire. The film garnered mostly positive reviews from critics, also for Carey's performance. Variety described her acting as "pitch-perfect." In January 2010, Carey won the Breakthrough Actress Performance Award for her role in Precious at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. On September 25, 2009, Carey's twelfth studio album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, was released. Reception for the album was mostly mixed; Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it "her most interesting album in a decade," while Jon Caramanica from The New York Times criticized Carey's vocal performances, decrying her overuse of her softer vocal registers at the expense of her more powerful lower and upper registers. Commercially, the album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, and became the lowest-selling studio album of her career. "Obsessed" served as the lead single, and debuted at number eleven in the US before peaked at number seven, and became Carey's 27th top-ten entry within the nation, tying her with Elton John and Janet Jackson for having the fifth most top-tens. Its follow-up single, a cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is", managed to break airplay records in Brazil. The song spent 27 weeks atop the Brasil Hot 100 Airplay, making it the longest running song in the chart's history. On December 31, 2009, Carey embarked on her seventh concert tour, Angels Advocate Tour, which visited the United States and Canada and ended on September 26, 2010. A planned remix album of Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, titled Angels Advocate, was slated for a March 30, 2010, release but was eventually cancelled. ### 2010–2014: Merry Christmas II You and Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse Following the cancellation of Angels Advocate, it was announced that Carey would return to the studio to start work on her thirteenth studio album. It was later revealed that it would be her second Christmas album, and follow-up to Merry Christmas. The release date for the album, titled Merry Christmas II You, was November 2, 2010; the track list included six new songs as well as a remix of "All I Want for Christmas Is You". Merry Christmas II You debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 with sales of 56,000 copies, and number one on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, making it only the second Christmas album to top this chart. In February 2011, she recorded a duet with Tony Bennett for his Duets II album, titled "When Do The Bells Ring For Me?", and re-recorded "All I Want for Christmas Is You" with Justin Bieber as a duet for his Christmas album, Under the Mistletoe. In November that year, Carey was included in the remix to the mixtape single "Warning" by Uncle Murda; the remix also features 50 Cent and Young Jeezy. Later that month, Carey released a duet with John Legend titled "When Christmas Comes", originally part of Merry Christmas II You. On March 1, 2012, Carey performed at New York City's Gotham Hall; her first time performing since her pregnancy. She also performed a three-song set at a special fundraiser for US President Barack Obama held in New York's Plaza Hotel. A new song titled "Bring It On Home", which Carey wrote for the event to show her support for Obama's re-election campaign, was also performed. In August 2012, she released a stand-alone single, "Triumphant (Get 'Em)", featuring rappers Rick Ross and Meek Mill. Carey joined the judging panel of the twelfth season of American Idol. Throughout the show there were on-set disagreements between Carey and fellow judge Nicki Minaj. Three years later, Carey did not make an appearance for its original series finale. In 2013, Carey appeared in Lee Daniels' film The Butler and made guest voice-star as a redneck character on the adult animated series American Dad!. In February 2013, Carey recorded and released a song called "Almost Home", for the soundtrack of the Walt Disney Studios film Oz the Great and Powerful. The video was directed by photographer David LaChapelle. For her 14th album, Carey worked with producers including DJ Clue?, Randy Jackson, Q-Tip, R. Kelly, David Morales, Afanasieff, Dupri, The-Dream and Da Brat. Carey told Billboard: "It's about making sure I have tons of good music, because at the end of the day that's the most important thing... There are a lot more raw ballads than people might expect...there are also uptempo and signature-type songs that represent [my] different facets as an artist." The lead single, "Beautiful", featuring singer Miguel, was released on May 6, 2013, and peaked at number 15 on the Hot 100. Carey taped a performance of "Beautiful" along with a medley of her greatest hits on May 15, 2013; the taping aired on the American Idol finale the following day. "The Art of Letting Go" has been chosen as the second single; it premiered via Facebook on November 11, 2013. Following another song release, "You're Mine (Eternal)", the album, titled Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse, was released on May 27, 2014. In October 2014, Carey announced an annual residency show All I Want For Christmas Is You, A Night of Joy & Festivity. Originally performed at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the residency began on December 15, 2014, and ended on December 15, 2019, after completing eight legs and fifty-six shows in various countries around the world. ### 2015–2017: \#1 to Infinity residency, television and film projects On January 30, 2015, it was announced that Carey had left Universal Music Group's Def Jam Recordings to reunite with L.A. Reid and Sony Music via Epic Records. Carey also announced her new \#1 to Infinity residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas the same month. To coincide with the residency, Carey released \#1 to Infinity, a greatest hits compilation album containing all of her eighteen Billboard Hot 100 number one singles at the time, along with a new recording, "Infinity", which was released as a single on April 27. In 2015 Carey had her directorial debut for the Hallmark Channel Christmas movie A Christmas Melody, in which she also performed as one of the main characters. In December 2015, Carey announced The Sweet Sweet Fantasy Tour which spanned a total of 27-dates beginning in March 2016, marking Carey's first major tour of mainland Europe in 13 years. Four stops included shows in South Africa. The tour grossed \$30.3 million. On March 15, 2016, Carey announced that she was filming Mariah's World, a docu-series for the E! network documenting her Sweet Sweet Fantasy tour and her wedding planning process. Carey told The New York Times, "I thought it would be a good opportunity to kind of, like, show my personality and who I am, even though I feel like my real fans have an idea of who I am... A lot of people have misperceptions about this and that." The series premiered on December 4, 2016. Carey guest starred on the musical drama Empire, as a superstar singer named Kitty and sung the song "Infamous" featuring Jussie Smollett. On December 5, 2016, Carey participated in the VH1 Divas Holiday: Unsilent Night benefit concert, alongside Vanessa Williams, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, and Teyana Taylor. On December 31, 2016, Carey's performance on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in Times Square received worldwide attention after technical difficulties caused Carey's in-ear monitors to malfunction, resulting in what The New York Times referred to as a "performance train wreck." Carey cited her inability to hear the music without in-ear auditory feedback as the cause for the mishap. Carey's representatives and Dick Clark Productions placed blame on each other. On February 3, 2017, Carey released the single "I Don't" featuring YG. Later that month, she voiced the Mayor of Gotham City in the animated film The Lego Batman Movie. In July 2017, Carey made a cameo in the comedy film Girls Trip and embarked on a tour with Lionel Richie, titled, All the Hits Tour. She was also featured in the official remix for French Montana's single "Unforgettable", alongside Swae Lee. In October 2017, she released a new soundtrack single, "The Star", for the movie of the same name. The song was nominated for the Best Original Song at the 75th Golden Globe Awards. Carey also developed an animated Christmas film, Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You, for which she recorded an original song called "Lil' Snowman". The film was released direct-to-video on November 14, 2017. On December 31, 2017, Carey returned to perform on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve after the technical difficulties that hindered her previous performance, in what The New York Times described as a "made-for-television act of pop culture redemption". ### 2018–2019: Caution and Merry Christmas reissue In 2018, Carey signed a worldwide deal with Live Nation Entertainment. The first commitment out of the deal was her new Las Vegas residency, The Butterfly Returns, which was launched in July 2018 to critical acclaim. Its first 12 shows in 2018 grossed \$3.6 million, with dates later extending into 2019 and 2020. Following the residency, Carey embarked on her Mariah Carey: Live in Concert tour in Asia and returned to Europe with her All I Want for Christmas Is You concert series. In September 2018, Carey announced plans to release her fifteenth studio album later in the year. The project was announced alongside the release of a new song titled "GTFO", which she performed on September 21, 2018, when she headlined the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival. The album's lead single, "With You", was released in October and performed for the first time at the American Music Awards of 2018. The single became Carey's highest-charting non-holiday song on the US Adult Contemporary chart since "We Belong Together" in 2005. It was followed by a second single, "A No No". The album, titled Caution, was released on November 16, 2018, and received universal acclaim from critics; it debuted at number five on the Billboard 200. By December 2018, the album had been featured on numerous year-end lists by music critics and publications. In February 2019, Carey commenced the Caution World Tour in support of the album. Later in 2019, Carey engaged in a series of business and television ventures. On September 18, 2019, Carey released "In the Mix", the theme song for the ABC sitcom Mixed-ish. On November 1, 2019, Carey re-released her holiday album Merry Christmas for its 25th anniversary. The album package included the original album and another disc which include live performances from Carey's 1994 concert at St. John the Divine Church, several tracks from Merry Christmas II You, as well as other stand-alone singles such as "Lil Snowman" and "The Star". On December 5, 2019, it was announced that a mini-documentary titled Mariah Carey Is Christmas!, charting the creation and subsequent cultural legacy of "All I Want for Christmas Is You" was to be produced and broadcast on Amazon Music; it premiered later that month. Peaking at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time the same year, the song ended up giving Carey her nineteenth chart-topper in the US, and it returned to its peak every holiday season since. ### 2020–present: The Rarities and The Meaning of Mariah Carey In January 2020, it was announced that Carey would be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey which was co-written with Michaela Angela Davis, was published in September of the same year. It recounts an "improbable and inspiring journey of survival and resilience as she struggles through complex issues of race, identity, class, childhood, and family trauma during her meteoric rise to music superstardom". The memoir became a number one New York Times Best Seller after its first week of release. Carey announced plans to celebrate the 30th anniversary of her debut album through the rest of 2020, in a promotional campaign billed "#MC30". The first release consisted of the live EP The Live Debut – 1990 which was released on July 17, 2020. On October 2, 2020, Carey released a compilation album titled The Rarities, which includes rare and unreleased songs that Carey recorded at various stages of her career. Its lead single, "Save the Day" featuring Lauryn Hill, was released on August 20, and its music video was released on September 13 as part of the airing of the US Open. Four days later, the album's second single—a cover of Irene Cara's "Out Here on My Own"—was released after being recorded by Carey in 2000. At the end of October, Carey was featured on Busta Rhymes' single "Where I Belong". Carey's 2020 Christmas special, Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special, premiered on December 4, 2020, on Apple TV+ along with a soundtrack. A new version of Carey's 2010 song "Oh Santa!", featuring Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson, was released as a single the same day. Later that month, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" topped the UK charts for the first time after spending a record 69 weeks in its top 40 prior to reaching the summit, becoming Carey's third number-one song in the country. In July 2021, Carey was featured on the track "Somewhat Loved" from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis' debut studio album Jam & Lewis: Volume One. On November 5, 2021, Carey released "Fall in Love at Christmas", which features Khalid and Kirk Franklin. The single was performed on her second Christmas special, Mariah's Christmas: The Magic Continues. On January 12, 2022, Carey announced a children's picture book titled The Christmas Princess, co-written with Michaela Angela Davis and illustrated by Fuuji Takashi; it was released in November that year. In March, Carey was featured alongside DJ Khaled on the remix of Latto's single "Big Energy", which interpolates Carey's 1995 single "Fantasy". In April, an online MasterClass course based on singing, in which Carey served as a vocal coach, was released. A re-recorded version of Carey's 1998 single, "The Roof", featuring Brandy Norwood, was made available exclusively to Masterclass subscribers. Later that month, Number 1's was released on vinyl as a Record Store Day exclusive and re-entered the top 20 of the Billboard 200. In June, Carey performed with Latto at the 2022 BET Awards. On September 16, 2022, an expanded version of Butterfly was released for the 25th anniversary of the album. In December 2022, Carey performed two pairs of shows at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto and Madison Square Garden in New York City. On December 20, 2022, a television special adapted from her shows in New York, titled Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas to All!, aired on CBS and became the most watched program of its night, drawing in a total of 3.8 million viewers and a 0.4 demo rating. Carey also served as a co-producer of Some Like It Hot on Broadway, a musical based on the eponymous 1959 comedy film, which premiered on December 11, 2022 at the Shubert Theatre in Manhattan, New York. It earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Musical. In February 2023, the 2009 track "It's a Wrap" experienced a revival on TikTok, prompting Carey to release an EP for the song, which included a new sped-up version. On September 8, 2023, Carey plans to released an expanded version of Music Box. ## Artistry ### Influences Carey has said that from childhood she has been influenced by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan as well as R&B and soul musicians including Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Aretha Franklin. Her music contains strong influences of gospel music, and she credits the Clark Sisters, Shirley Caesar, and Edwin Hawkins as the most influential in her early years. When Carey incorporated hip hop into her sound, speculation arose that she was making an attempt to take advantage of the genre's popularity, but she told Newsweek, "People just don't understand. I grew up with this music." She has expressed appreciation for rappers such as the Sugarhill Gang, Eric B. & Rakim, the Wu-Tang Clan, The Notorious B.I.G. and Mobb Deep, with whom she collaborated on the single "The Roof (Back in Time)" (1998). Carey was heavily influenced by Minnie Riperton, and began experimenting with the whistle register due to her original practice of the range. During Carey's career, her vocal and musical style, along with her level of success, has been compared to Whitney Houston, whom she has also cited as an influence, and Celine Dion. Carey and her peers, according to Garry Mulholland, are "the princesses of wails... virtuoso vocalists who blend chart-oriented pop with mature MOR torch song." Author and writer Lucy O'Brien attributed the comeback of Barbra Streisand's "old-fashioned showgirl" to Carey and Dion, and described them and Houston as "groomed, airbrushed and overblown to perfection." Carey's musical transition and use of more revealing clothing during the late 1990s were, in part, initiated to distance herself from this image, and she subsequently said that most of her early work was "schmaltzy MOR." Some have noted that unlike Houston and Dion, Carey writes and produces her own music. ### Musical style Love is the subject of the majority of Carey's lyrics, although she has written about themes such as loss, sex, race, abuse and spirituality. She has said that much of her work is partly autobiographical, but Time magazine's Christopher John Farley wrote: "If only Mariah Carey's music had the drama of her life. Her songs are often sugary and artificial—NutraSweet soul. But her life has passion and conflict," applying it to the first stages of her career. He commented that as her albums progressed, so too her songwriting and music blossomed into more mature and meaningful material. Jim Faber of the New York Daily News, made similar comments, "For Carey, vocalizing is all about the performance, not the emotions that inspired it. Singing, to her, represents a physical challenge, not an emotional unburdening." While reviewing Music Box, Stephen Holden from Rolling Stone commented that Carey sang with "sustained passion," while Arion Berger of Entertainment Weekly wrote that during some vocal moments, Carey becomes "too overwhelmed to put her passion into words." In 2001, The Village Voice wrote that "Carey's Strawberry Shortcake soul still provides the template with which teen-pop cuties draw curlicues around those centerless [Diane] Warren ballads." Following Carey's divorce with Tommy Mottola, Carey broke free of adult contemporary arrangements in favour of what Alex Macpherson of The Guardian described as "a lovingly crafted, hip-hop-inflected quiet storm". Carey often records her layered background vocals, which has been described as "a swooning bank of a hundred Mariahs". The singer claims that "it's because I started out as a backup singer and doing sessions as a background vocalist learning from some of the greatest background vocalists, and also people like Luther Vandross. Growing up, I admired his texture in and of itself but also his use of background vocals". David Foster stated that Carey "thinks like a record producer and lays her vocals down like a virtuoso guitarist". Carey's songwriting is noted for its "eccentric verbosity". Jeffrey Ingold of Vice argues that her lyrics are "among the most verbose in pop music." Carey's output makes use of electronic instruments such as drum machines, keyboards and synthesizers. Many of her songs contain piano-driven melodies, as she was given piano lessons when she was six years old. Carey said that she cannot read sheet music and prefers to collaborate with a pianist when composing her material, but feels that it is easier to experiment with faster and less-conventional melodies and chord progressions using this technique. While Carey learned to play the piano at a young age, and incorporates several ranges of production and instrumentation into her music, she has maintained that her voice has always been her most important asset: "My voice is my instrument; it always has been." Carey began commissioning remixes of her material early in her career and helped to spearhead the practice of recording entirely new vocals for remixes. Disc jockey David Morales has collaborated with Carey on several occasions, starting with "Dreamlover" (1993), which popularized the tradition of remixing R&B songs into house records, and which Slant magazine named one of the greatest dance songs. From "Fantasy" (1995) onward, Carey enlisted both hip-hop and house producers to re-structure her album compositions. Entertainment Weekly included two remixes of "Fantasy" on a list of Carey's greatest recordings compiled in 2005: a National Dance Music Award-winning remix produced by Morales, and a Sean Combs production featuring rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. The latter has been credited with popularizing the R&B/hip-hop collaboration trend that has continued into the 2000s, through artists such as Ashanti and Beyoncé. Combs said that Carey "knows the importance of mixes, so you feel like you're with an artist who appreciates your work—an artist who wants to come up with something with you." In an article in The New York Times, writer David Browne discusses how the once-ubiquitous melisma pop style was heavily popularized by singers such as Carey. Browne commented, "beginning [in 1990], melisma overtook pop in a way it hadn't before. Mariah Carey's debut hit from 1990, "Vision of Love", [set] the bar insanely high for notes stretched louder, longer and knottier than most pop fans had ever heard." Browne further added "A subsequent generation of singers, including Ms. Aguilera, Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé, built their careers around melisma. (Men like Brian McKnight and Tyrese also indulged in it, but women tended to dominate the form.)" ### Voice and timbre Carey possesses a five-octave vocal range, and has the ability to reach notes beyond the seventh octave. Referred to as the "Songbird Supreme" by the Guinness World Records due to her ability to sing in the whistle register, she was ranked as the greatest singer of the past twenty years in a 2003 MTV2 online poll. Carey said of the result, "What it really means is voice of the MTV generation. Of course, it's an enormous compliment, but I don't feel that way about myself." In 2023, Rolling Stone named her the fifth greatest singer of all time and the "architect of modern pop". Regarding her type of voice, several critics have described her as a coloratura soprano or just a soprano. Carey claims that she has had nodules on her vocal cords since childhood, due to which she can sing in a higher register than others. However, tiredness and sleep deprivation can affect her vocals due to the nodules, and Carey explained that she went through a lot of practice to maintain a balance during singing. Carey stated in a 2021 interview with the Daily Express that with her voice, it's all about "timing, vocal rest and sleep". Jon Pareles of The New York Times described Carey's lower register as a "rich, husky alto" that extends to "dog-whistle high notes." Additionally, towards the late 1990s, Carey began incorporating breathy vocals into her material. Tim Levell from BBC News described her vocals as "sultry close-to-the-mic breathiness," while USA Today's Elysa Gardner wrote "it's impossible to deny the impact her vocal style, a florid blend of breathy riffing and resonant belting, has had on today's young pop and R&B stars." Alex Macpherson of The Guardian noted that Carey's voice on Butterfly is "an instrument of texture rather than volume, with pillows of lavishly layered vocals and nuanced phrasing magnifying the emotional intensity of the songs." Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker adds her timbre on "Vision of Love" possesses various colors, stating, "Carey's sound changes with nearly every line, mutating from a steely tone to a vibrating growl and then to a humid, breathy coo." Randy Jackson said that "It's in the tone, that buttery tone that she has with her voice that is unbelievably amazing and unbelievably identifiable." Carey also possesses a "whisper register." In an interview, Ron Givens of Entertainment Weekly described it this way, "first, a rippling, soulful ooh comes rolling effortlessly from her throat: alto. Then, after a quick breath, she goes for the stratosphere, with a sound that nearly changes the barometric pressure in the room. In one brief swoop, she seems to squeal and roar at the same time." Her sense of pitch is admired and Jon Pareles adds "she can linger over sensual turns, growl with playful confidence, syncopate like a scat singer... with startlingly exact pitch." Carey is noted for her vocal improvisation skills. Winston Cook-Wilson wrote that "In her vocal prime, she was able to access upper-echelon dog-whistle notes even her forebear Minnie Riperton couldn't muster." Her phrasing in the whistle register can be heard in the 1999 Rainbow track "Bliss" and the singer was praised for her perfect pitch and clear enunciation. ### Stage performances and videos Despite being called a "show stopper" and "the 1990s pop phenomenon", Carey suffered from stage fright in her early years in the music industry. One of her earliest performances was at MTV Unplugged, which received positive reception as Carey silenced critics saying her vocals were studio-made. Carey's "The Star-Spangled Banner" rendition at the Super Bowl XXXVI was called "stunning" by Billboard. She also performed "America the Beautiful" at the 1990 NBA Finals in which Rolling Stone writer, Brittany Spanos, stated the players were struck "with awe by the incredible talent of a burgeoning young star". The singer received the only standing ovation of the night at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards, after performing the medley of "We Belong Together and "Fly Like a Bird". Although Carey's performance at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve 2017 was marred by technical issues, she returned to the stage a year later and, according to Time, "effectively redeemed herself". Carey is known for being very static during her live performances; some reviewers credited her stage fright and lack of confidence as the reasoning, while others pointed out that her performances focus on her vocals and the quality of her songs. Her onstage hand gesticulations have usually been mimicked, as the singer has a tendency for "using her hands to point, flutter and sweep through the air as she deftly crests each run". When reviewing Carey's 2014 concert, Michael Lallo wrote that "If you're Mariah, you ... stroke your hair a lot. When a high note is on the horizon, you brace yourself by touching your ear and adopting a pained expression, provoking the crowd into losing its collective mind." The music video for "Fantasy" was the first that Carey directed entirely on her own. Carey had been open about the fact that she had not been happy with some of her previous music videos, and has subsequently been noted for self-directing and co-producing her subsequent videography. The song "Honey" pushed Carey further towards hip hop and R&B than before. The music video gained further attention, as Carey, for the first time in her career, was provocatively dressed, giving viewers a "taste of the freer Mariah." Billboard ranked Carey 73rd on its list of "The 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time" in 2020, stating that "over three decades, [Carey] has gone from breezy girl next door, flaunting a denim collection as wide as her vocal range, to secret agent, runaway bride and even her own stalker in a collection of music videos that play like mini-dramas". The music video for "The Roof" was ranked 18th on Slant Magazine's "100 Greatest Music Videos. The music videos for "Honey" and "Heartbreaker" remain among the most expensive ever made, costing over \$2 million. In 2021, Carey was honoured at the African American Film Critics Association with a Special Achievement Innovator Award for her "visual storytelling in her music videos and specials". ## Cultural status ### Public image Carey has been called a pop icon and has been labeled a "diva" for her stardom and persona. She said, "I have had diva moments, and then people can't handle it. I guess it's a little intense, because I come from a true diva: My mother is an opera singer. And that's a real diva, you know–Juilliard diva. And I mean it as a compliment, or I wouldn't be the person I am without experiencing that." Carey's fanbase is known as the "Lambily", a portmanteau of "lamb" and "family". With over 21 million followers, Carey is one of the most popular musicians on Twitter. Her fans are credited with originating the internet term "skinny legend", used as a form of praise and endearment for their idol. In 2008, Carey was named one of Time's 100 most influential artists and entertainers in the world. NOW writer Kevin Hegge agreed that "Carey's influence is indisputable". Her style has often been described as "eccentric" and "over the top". Writer Noah Berlatsky noted that "Carey has always reveled in uber-feminine, girly imagery", with her album titles such as Butterfly, Rainbow, Glitter and Charmbracelet being prime examples. In her memoir, she stated, "I refuse to acknowledge time. (...) Not living based on time became a way to hold on to myself, to keep close and keep alive that inner child of mine. It's why I gravitate toward enduring characters like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Tinker Bell. They remind me we can be timeless." Tom Breihan of Stereogum wrote in 2015 that "decades from now, we will be looking back at Mariah Carey as one of the most gloriously batshit pop stars of all time." As the biggest pop star in music by the mid-1990s, Carey's "first years as a pop star were extraordinarily fruitful but restrictive". In the late 1990s, after separating from Mottola, Carey adopted a more provocative and less conservative image than had been previously seen and began wearing more revealing clothes. She has since been described as a sex symbol. The singer mentions Marilyn Monroe as one of her biggest idols and her "beauty icon", and she referenced Monroe in some of her music videos, such as "I Still Believe" or "Don't Forget About Us". Her album Butterfly has been credited for revamping Carey's image as a pop star where she began to embrace hip hop and R&B themes and fully come into her own self, resulting in butterflies becoming a metaphorical symbol of her impact and legacy upon pop and R&B music. In the early 2000s, Carey was a "tabloid fixture" and her public breakdown during the promotion of her 2001 film, Glitter, became the "stuff of tabloid legend" according to Justin Curto, writer for Vulture. Her return to prominence in 2005 with the album The Emancipation of Mimi is regarded as one of the greatest musical comebacks in history. After joining American Idol as a judge for the twelfth season, Carey became one of the highest paid American television stars ever. Emilia Petrarca of W stated that "Carey is uber-cautious about cultivating her public image" but that when it comes to style, she is "more do than don't". Several media outlets have called Carey the "Queen of Shade". When asked about American singer Jennifer Lopez in a German TV interview, Carey's response was, "I don't know her". The clip became a viral internet meme and has been brought up in many other interviews with both of the singers. After the release of "Obsessed", critics heavily compared its lyrics to Eminem who had negatively referenced her several times in songs, and suggested Carey alluded to him and his 'obsession' with her. "Obsessed" never mentions the rapper's name, although reviewers felt it to be very obvious. Additionally, Carey played a role that resembled the rapper in the song's accompanying music video. Due to her large gay fanbase, Carey is recognized as a gay icon and her song "Hero" is regarded as an anthem among the gay community as it touches upon themes of embracing individuality and overcoming self-doubt. According to Carey herself, a lot of her gay fans admitted to also be growing up listening to her song "Outside" and relating to the feeling of isolation and unfitting. Her diva persona has also given her much admiration from gay fans. Carey was honored by GLAAD in 2016 with the GLAAD Ally Award for which she expressed gratitude to her LGBT+ fans. In her speech she thanked the community, "For the unconditional love ... I wish all of you love, peace, [and] harmony". Fashion has also been a part of Carey's image. She was cited a fashion icon by Insider writer Susanna Heller who added that "her decadent closet spans multiple rooms and is full of designer clothing, lingerie, shoes, and accessories". CR Fashion Book writer Shepherd also stated that while her "sartorial aesthetic has shifted here and there ..., the music icon largely favors sexy, skin-baring, and often bedazzled looks. During her tours, she has frequently worn Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin high-end stiletto footwear, as well as leotards, corsets, and fishnet tights. Laura Antonia Jordan of Grazia called Carey fashion "royalty" and stated that in the 1990s, her go-to looks were "super-tight silhouettes, cropped tops, thigh-grazing hemlines and dangerously high slits." Carey has also been credited for beginning the trend of wearing low-rise jeans in the early 2000s, after cutting off the waistband of the denim she wore for the music video of "Heartbreaker", which have since been described as "iconic". Vogue writer Christian Allaire stated that in the latter half of her career, Carey has "rarely hit without her evening gowns, often embellished with crystals, sequins, or feathers." ### Queen of Christmas "All I Want for Christmas Is You", as well as its parent album Merry Christmas, have become such a ubiquitous part of wider popular culture that Carey's name became synonymous with the season, and she has since been dubbed the "Queen of Christmas". Both the song and album have been hailed as being "one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon" by publications such as The New Yorker. Speaking to Vogue in 2015, Elvis Duran stated that the song's appeal was based on the fact that it was "a modern song that could actually have been a hit back in the '40s", praising its "timeless, classic quality". The success of the song, in particular, has led Carey to build what Billboard described as a "growing holiday mini-empire". Multiple media sources have referred to Carey as a modern holiday icon. The singer has often incorporated holiday-themed outfits during her Christmas shows and music videos. Billboard noted that "each year, her reight gets grander and more festive. (...) Over the years, [Carey] has rocked nearly every shade of red for the season's fashions, from plunging gowns and floor-length coats to ensembles inspired by Santa, Mrs. Claus and The Nutcrackers toy soldiers. She's also a pro at pulling off winter white, whether she's wearing a snow-white dress covered in crystals or a fluffy hood tailor-made for keeping the December chill at bay." Due to the song's ongoing popularity, as well as social media memes that show retail workers' disdain for the song due to its frequent airplay at their jobs (which sometimes require the round-the-clock display of Christmas music), Carey has taken advantage of this by posting a video on her social media every year since 2019 around midnight Eastern time on November 1, announcing that "it's time" to play the song. Carey initially renounced the title, saying that "to me, Mother Mary is the Queen of Christmas". Despite this, in March 2021, she attempted to trademark the phrase "Queen of Christmas", which received backlash from singers Darlene Love and Elizabeth Chan. In November 2022, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board rejected Carey's request. ### Legacy Carey has been credited for her role in breaking down racial barriers in popular culture and facilitating public discourse surrounding multiracialism during the 1990s. Brittany Luse from Vulture wrote that Carey "rose to fame as public conversations about multiracial identity were expanding in the early '90s', noting that the singer "became something of an avatar for biracial identity, a validating presence for some and a source of both curiosity and discomfort for others". Luse concluded that "Carey's experience of fame could have happened only once; her stardom punched a hole in the sky. Her career matured as current conversations about mixed identity were still forming and while the passing narratives of the past, both brilliant and clumsy, had yet to fade from pop-cultural memory. There was a time when she might have been considered the most famous mixed person of Black and white parentage in America, but now the field's far more crowded". In her book Tragic No More: Mixed-Race Women and the Nexus of Sex and Celebrity, Caroline A. Streeter, an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, also described Carey as one of the "ideal figures through which to consider the post–Civil Rights era's apparent rehabilitation and transformation of the mulatto/a into a biracial subject of representation". Carey's enduring popularity as a musician has received extensive recognition, with Anne Branigin from The Root commenting: "There's longevity, then there's Mariah Carey". When reviewing her fifteenth studio album, Caution, Eddino Hadi wrote, "In the last three decades since she made her debut, many female pop stars have scaled the heights that Carey has reached but very, very few have matched her longevity". She is the first artist to reach number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the physical, digital and streaming eras. Carey's music has been recorded, performed or sampled by a variety of artists such as Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, Dolly Parton, Luciano Pavarotti, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shania Twain, Michael Ball, Ariana Grande, Bryson Tiller, Drake, Fifth Harmony, and Sigala. The 2019 film Always Be My Maybe was a play-on-words of Carey's 1996 single "Always Be My Baby", which was used as the movie's theme song. #### Vocal influence Carey's vocal style, as well as her singing ability, have significantly impacted popular and contemporary music. She has been considered one of the greatest vocalists. As music critic G. Brown from The Denver Post wrote, "For better or worse, Mariah Carey's five-octave range and melismatic style have influenced a generation of pop singers." According to Stevie Wonder, "When people talk about the great influential singers, they talk about Aretha, Whitney and Mariah. That's a testament to her talent. Her range is that amazing." Carey has inspired singers and songwriters all over the world. In a review of her Greatest Hits album, Devon Powers of PopMatters writes that "She has influenced countless female vocalists after her. At 32, she is already a living legend—even if she never sings another note." Upon honoring her with the "Icon Award" at their eponymous awards ceremony in 2012, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) described Carey's songwriting as having a "unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers". Multiple media sources referred to Carey as the "Queen of Melisma". According to Rolling Stone, "Her mastery of melisma, the fluttering strings of notes that decorate songs like "Vision of Love", inspired the entire American Idol vocal school, for better or worse, and virtually every other female R&B singer since the Nineties." Chart historian Tom Breihan chose "Vision of Love" as one of the chapters in his book The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music, stating that the song "set the stage for a whole decade of showy, pyrotechnic '90s R&B vocals. Carey created an environment where her disciples could flourish, and she did it by constructing "Vision Of Love" as a showcase for her voice". In 2008, Jody Rosen of Slate wrote of Carey's influence in modern music, calling her the most influential vocal stylist of the last two decades, the person who made rococo melismatic singing. Rosen further exemplified Carey's influence by drawing a parallel with American Idol, which to her, "often played out as a clash of melisma-mad Mariah wannabes. And, today, nearly 20 years after Carey's debut, major labels continue to bet the farm on young stars such as the winner of Britain's X Factor show, Leona Lewis, with her Generation Next gloss on Mariah's big voice and big hair." New York Magazine's editor Roger Deckker further commented that "Whitney Houston may have introduced melisma (the vocally acrobatic style of lending a word an extra syllable or twenty) to the charts, but it was Mariah—with her jaw-dropping range—who made it into America's default sound." Deckker also added that "Every time you turn on American Idol, you are watching her children." As Professor Katherine L. Meizel said in her book, The Mediation of Identity Politics in American Idol, "Carey's influence (is) in the emulation of melisma or her singing amongst the wannabe's, it's also her persona, her diva, her stardom which inspires them... a pre-fame conic look." With her ability to do runs, scats, and incredible control using whistle register, Mariah Carey is credited for popularizing this technique in mainstream music, making her name synonymous with the term. #### Popularizing remixes The impact of Carey's artistry has helped popularize rappers as a featured act in pop music through her post-1995 songs. She has been called the "Queen of Remixes" by multiple media sources, with MTV writer, Princess Gabbara, noting that it is "no secret that [Carey] goes to great lengths to deliver a spectacular remix, often re-recording vocals, penning new lyrics, shooting new music videos, and recording different versions to satisfy pop, R&B, hip-hop, and EDM audiences". Speaking to Billboard in 2019 for a profile of Carey's career, David Morales, who first collaborated with Carey on the Def Club Mix of her 1993 single "Dreamlover", commented on Carey's revolutionary role in the popularization of remixes: "Mariah opened up a whole other door, and not many people at that time were capable of that. When other big artists saw what I did with Mariah, they wanted that. She's how I got into the studio with Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin, Seal and Donna Summer." Sasha Frere-Jones, editor of The New Yorker commented, "It became standard for R&B/hip-hop stars like Missy Elliott and Beyoncé, to combine melodies with rapped verses. And young white pop stars—including Britney Spears, 'N Sync and Christina Aguilera—have spent much of the past ten years making pop music that is unmistakably R&B." Moreover, Jones concludes that "[Carey's] idea of pairing a female songbird with the leading male MCs of hip-hop changed R&B and, eventually, all of pop. Although now anyone is free to use this idea, the success of The Emancipation of Mimi suggests that it still belongs to Carey." Judnick Mayard, writer of The Fader, wrote that in regarding of R&B and hip hop collaboration, "The champion of this movement is Mariah Carey." Mayard also expressed that "To this day ODB and Mariah may still be the best and most random hip hop collaboration of all time," citing that due to the record "Fantasy", "R&B and Hip-Hop were the best of step siblings." Kelefa Sanneh of The New York Times wrote, "In the mid-1990s Ms. Carey pioneered a subgenre that some people call the thug-love duet. Nowadays clean-cut pop stars are expected to collaborate with roughneck rappers, but when Ms. Carey teamed up with Ol' Dirty Bastard, of the Wu-Tang Clan, for the 1995 hit remix of 'Fantasy', it was a surprise, and a smash." ## Achievements Throughout her career, Carey has earned numerous awards and honors. She has won five Grammy Awards, nineteen World Music Awards, ten American Music Awards, and fifteen Billboard Music Awards. She is one of the best-selling recording artists in history, with more than 200 million records sold. She is also an inductee of the Songwriters Hall of Fame. As of March 2022, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) lists Carey as the best-selling female albums artist, with shipments of 72 million units in the US, and one of the best-selling digital singles artists. She is the second female singer to amass both diamond-certified albums and singles, with the albums Music Box and Daydream, and the single "All I Want for Christmas Is You" – the only holiday song and the first female song from the 20th century to achieve that. With sales of over 20 million copies worldwide, Music Box and Daydream rank among the best-selling albums of all time. Carey was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015, and a Billboard Icon Award in 2019. In 2023, she became one of the first 13 recipients of the BRIT Billion Award, for surpassing the milestone one billion streams in the United Kingdom. Carey has set and broken numerous Hot 100 records. She has topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 91 weeks, the most for any artist in US chart history. On that same chart, she has accumulated 19 number-one singles, the most for any solo artist (second behind the Beatles) and she is also the only artist to have a number-one song in each year of a decade (1990s decade). In 2020, Carey became the first artist to top the Billboard Hot 100 over four decades (1990s–2020s). Carey was the first woman to debut at number-one, with "Fantasy", the first act to debut at number-one multiple times, and she held the record for the most number-one debuts (three), until surpassed in 2020. Her single "One Sweet Day", with Boyz II Men, spent sixteen consecutive weeks at the top of Billboard's Hot 100 chart in 1996, setting the record for the most weeks atop the Hot 100 chart until surpassed in 2019 by "Old Town Road". "One Sweet Day" and "We Belong Together" became the best performing songs of their respective decades (1990s and 2000s), making Carey the only act to accomplish the feat twice. She also holds the record for the longest span of number-one songs (29 years) and the most consecutive years (eleven) topping the chart. The song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" alone broke multiple Billboard records. In 2021, the magazine ranked it as the greatest holiday song of all time. It is the longest-running number-one song on the Billboard Holiday 100 chart (57 cumulative weeks, of the chart's 62 total weeks) and the longest-running holiday number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart It also holds the record for the longest span of a song's first and last week at the summit of the Hot 100 – a record that's annually extended. "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is the oldest song to top the chart and the only song to return to number-one in more than two separate chart runs. In 2008, Billboard listed "We Belong Together" ninth on The Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs and second on Top Billboard Hot 100 R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. On November 19, 2010, Billboard magazine ranked Carey at number four on their "Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years" chart. In 2012, Carey was ranked second on VH1's list of the "100 Greatest Women in Music". Billboard magazine ranked her at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making Carey the second most successful female artist in the history of the chart. The same publication ranked Carey at number four on their "Top 125 Artists of All Time" chart making her the top female act. In 2021, The Emancipation of Mimi and "Fantasy" were included on the new editions of Rolling Stone magazine's lists of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", respectively. Carey's holiday album Merry Christmas has sold over 15 million copies worldwide, and is the best-selling Christmas album. The lead single, "All I Want for Christmas Is You", became the first holiday song to be certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America, and the only holiday ringtone to reach multi-platinum status in the US. With sales of over 14 million copies worldwide, it is one of the best-selling physical singles in music history and the best-selling holiday song by a female artist. It is also the highest-certified and the longest-charting song by a woman in the UK. In 2018, Carey became the first artist to replace herself at the number one spot on Billboard'''s Top R&B Albums chart, with Caution being replaced by Merry Christmas. On November 24, 2019, the song won three Guinness World Records. Additionally, it holds the record for the most Spotify streams in a single day (over 20 million plays on December 24, 2022). In 2021, the song earned one billion streams on Spotify, making it both Carey's first song and the first holiday song overall to do so. In 2023, the song was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry, due to its "cultural, historical and aesthetic importance" in the American soundscape. Carey experienced an enduring success in various Asian countries. She is the best-selling Western artist in Japan. \#1's was certified with a triple-Million award and holds the record as the best-selling international album in the country, while Music Box, Daydream, Butterfly and Merry Christmas all sold over 2 million copies in the country, with the latter one, being the fourth best-selling international album. Her song "All I Want for Christmas Is You" is the third best-selling song by a non-Asian artist. In 2018, Sony Music Asia Pacific presented Carey with a certificate of achievement for 1.6 billion sales units in Asia-Pacific. Carey also holds the record for the longest-running number-one song on the Brasil Hot 100, with her 2009 cover of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is", which spent 27 weeks atop the Brazilian charts. ## Other activities ### Business ventures Declining offers to appear in commercials in the United States during her early career, Carey was not involved in brand marketing initiatives until 2006, when she participated in endorsements for Intel Centrino personal computers and launched a jewelry and accessories line for teenagers, Glamorized, in American Claire's and Icing stores. During this period, as part of a partnership with Pepsi and Motorola, Carey recorded and promoted a series of exclusive ringtones, including "Time of Your Life". She signed a licensing deal with the cosmetics company Elizabeth Arden, and in 2007, she released her own fragrance, "M". The Elizabeth Arden deal has netted her \$150 million. For the fragrance, Carey won a Basenotes Fragrance Award for Best Celebrity Women's Fragrance as well as being nominated in three other categories. She has released a series of fragrances with Elizabeth Arden, including Luscious Pink (2008) and Forever (2009). On November 29, 2010, she debuted a collection on HSN, which included jewelry, shoes and fragrances. In November 2011, Carey was announced as "brand ambassador" for Jenny Craig which included "participation in a new company initiative... public service announcements and community and education programs." In 2018, Carey featured in an advertisement for Hostelworld with the tagline "Even Divas are Believers". On August 25, 2019, Carey signed a \$12 million contract with the Walkers crisps brand as part of their Christmas campaign and starred in a commercial for the company. In conjunction with the 25th anniversary release of Merry Christmas in 2019, she organized a gift guide with Amazon, and partnered for an exclusive Christmas ornament with Swarovski. In December 2020, Carey launched a partnership with Virtual Dining Concepts and restaurateur, Robert Earl, for a biscuit line titled Mariah's Cookies. In 2021, Carey announced the launch of a new line of alcohol called Black Irish, an homage to her Black, Venezuelan, and Irish heritage. That same year, Carey also partnered with McDonald's, promoting an entirely new limited time menu. In 2022, Carey recorded nine video lessons for MasterClass titled "Mariah Carey Teaches the Voice as an Instrument", as well as re-recording "The Roof (Back in Time)" alongside Brandy. ### Philanthropy and activism Carey is a philanthropist who has been involved with several charitable organizations. She became associated with the Fresh Air Fund in the early 1990s, and is the co-founder of a camp located in Fishkill, New York, that enables inner-city youth to embrace the arts and introduces them to career opportunities. The camp was called Camp Mariah "for her generous support and dedication to Fresh Air children," and she received a Congressional Horizon Award for her youth-related charity work. Carey has continued her direct involvement with Camp Mariah, and by 2019 the executive director of The Fresh Air Fund reported that "...the kids who have gone to Camp Mariah have higher graduation rates out of high school and college. In 1999, Carey was presented with a Congressional Award for contributing "to expanding opportunities for all Americans through their own personal contributions, and [setting] exceptional examples for young people through their own successes in life. In 2019, she was honoured by Varietys Power of Women for her work with The Fresh Air Fund's Camp Mariah. Carey also donated royalties from her hits "Hero" and "One Sweet Day" to charities. She has worked with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and in November 2006 she was awarded the Foundation's Wish Idol for her "extraordinary generosity and her many wish granting achievements." Carey has volunteered for the Police Athletic League of New York City and contributed to the obstetrics department of New York Presbyterian Hospital Cornell Medical Center. A percentage of the sales of MTV Unplugged was donated to various other charities. In 2008, Carey was named Hunger Ambassador of the World Hunger Relief Movement. In February 2010, the song, "100%", which was originally written and recorded for the film, Precious, was used as one of the theme songs for the 2010 Winter Olympics, with all money proceeds going to Team USA. In 2017, Carey was awarded with PETA's Angel for Animals Award for promoting animal adoption through her animated movie All I Want for Christmas Is You. One of Carey's most high-profile benefit concert appearances was on VH1's 1998 Divas Live special, during which she performed alongside other female singers in support of the Save the Music Foundation. The concert was a ratings success, and Carey participated in the Divas 2000 special and a 2016 holiday edition. She appeared at the America: A Tribute to Heroes nationally televised fundraiser in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and performed before peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. Carey hosted the CBS television special At Home for the Holidays, which documented real-life stories of adopted children and foster families. In 2005, Carey performed for Live 8 in London and at the Hurricane Katrina relief telethon "Shelter from the Storm". In August 2008, Carey and other singers recorded the charity single, "Just Stand Up" produced by Babyface and L. A. Reid, to support Stand Up to Cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Carey participated in the iHeart Living Room Concert for America and Rise Up New York! telethons to raise money for those affected by COVID-19. In response to the murder of George Floyd, Carey took to social media and sang a snippet of her 1990 song "There's Got to Be a Way" while encouraging fans to demand justice. In 2008, Carey performed in a New Year's Eve concert for the family of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. She later said she felt "horrible and embarrassed" to have taken part in the concert. To make amends, in March 2011, Carey's representative Cindi Berger stated that royalties for the song "Save the Day", written for her fourteenth studio album, would be donated to charities that create awareness for human rights. Berger also said that Carey "has and continues to donate her time, money and countless hours of personal service to many organizations both here and abroad." "Save the Day" remained unreleased until 2020. In 2013, human rights activists criticized Carey for performing in a concert for Angola's "father-daughter kleptocracy" and accused her of accepting "dictator cash". ## Personal life Carey began dating Tommy Mottola while recording Mariah Carey, and they were married in New York City on June 5, 1993, during a half-million dollar ceremony at Saint Thomas Church. The newlyweds moved into a custom-built mansion referred to by Carey as "Sing Sing" located on a 51-acre estate in Bedford, New York, alluding to her feeling imprisoned there. After the release of Daydream and the success that followed, Carey began focusing on her personal life, which was a constant struggle at the time. Their relationship began to deteriorate due to their growing creative differences in terms of her music, as well as Mottola's controlling nature. They announced their separation on May 30, 1997, and their divorce was finalized by the time Mottola remarried on December 2, 2000. In 1998, their home together was sold for \$20.5 million to Nelson Peltz and burned down in 1999. Carey was in a relationship with baseball shortstop Derek Jeter from 1997 to 1998, and with singer Luis Miguel from 1998 to 2001. She met actor and comedian Nick Cannon while they shot the music video for her song "Bye Bye" on an island off the coast of Antigua. They were married on April 30, 2008, in the Bahamas. In the same year, Carey suffered a miscarriage. At 35 weeks into her next pregnancy, she gave birth to their fraternal twins, Moroccan and Monroe, on April 30, 2011, via Cesarean section. In August 2014, Cannon confirmed he and Carey had separated. He filed for divorce on December 12, 2014, which was finalized in 2016. In 2015, Carey began dating Australian billionaire James Packer and, on January 21, 2016, she announced they were engaged. By October, however, they had called off the engagement. In October 2016, she began dating American choreographer Bryan Tanaka. Carey is an active Episcopalian. She stated in 2006: "I do believe that I have been born again in a lot of ways. I think what I've changed are my priorities and my relationships with God. I feel the difference when I don't have my private moments to pray... I'm a fighter, but I learned that I'm not in charge. Whatever God wants to happen is what's going to happen. I feel like I've had endless second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth chances. It's by the grace of God I'm still here." In April 2018, Carey opened up about taking therapy sessions and medication for her struggle with bipolar II disorder. She was diagnosed in 2001 and initially kept the diagnosis private. ## Discography - Mariah Carey (1990) - Emotions (1991) - Music Box (1993) - Merry Christmas (1994) - Daydream (1995) - Butterfly (1997) - Rainbow (1999) - Glitter (2001) - Charmbracelet (2002) - The Emancipation of Mimi (2005) - E=MC2 (2008) - Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel (2009) - Merry Christmas II You (2010) - Me. I Am Mariah... The Elusive Chanteuse (2014) - Caution (2018) ## Filmography - The Bachelor (1999) - Glitter (2001) - WiseGirls (2002) - Death of a Dynasty (2003) - State Property 2 (2005) - Tennessee (2008) - You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008) - Precious (2009) - The Butler (2013) - A Christmas Melody (2015) - Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) - The Keys of Christmas (2016) - The Lego Batman Movie (2017) - Girls Trip (2017) - The Star (2017) - All I Want for Christmas Is You (2017) - Mariah Carey's Magical Christmas Special (2020) - Mariah's Christmas: The Magic Continues (2021) ## Tours and residencies `Headlining tours ` - Music Box Tour (1993) - Daydream World Tour (1996) - Butterfly World Tour (1998) - Rainbow World Tour (2000) - Charmbracelet World Tour (2003–2004) - The Adventures of Mimi (2006) - Angels Advocate Tour (2009–2010) - Australian Tour 2013 (2013) - The Elusive Chanteuse Show (2014) - The Sweet Sweet Fantasy Tour (2016) - Mariah Carey: Live in Concert (2018) - Caution World Tour (2019) - Merry Christmas to All! Tour (2022) `Co-headlining tours ` - All the Hits Tour (with Lionel Richie) (2017) `Residencies ` - Live at the Pearl (2009) - All I Want for Christmas Is You: A Night of Joy and Festivity (2014–2019) - \#1 to Infinity (2015–2017) - The Butterfly Returns (2018–2020) ## Written works ## See also - List of best-selling singles - List of best-selling albums - List of best-selling female music artists - List of best-selling music artists in the United States - List of Billboard Hot 100 chart achievements and milestones - List of artists who reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 - List of artists who reached number one on the US dance chart - Artists with the most number-ones on the US dance chart - Forbes'' list of highest-earning musicians

Jersey Act

20th-century British Thoroughbred horse regulation

The Jersey Act was introduced to prevent the registration of most American-bred Thoroughbred horses in the British General Stud Book. It had its roots in the desire of British horse breeders to halt the influx of American-bred racehorses of possibly impure bloodlines during the early 20th century. Many American-bred horses were exported to Europe to race and retire to a breeding career after a number of U.S. states banned gambling, which depressed Thoroughbred racing as well as breeding in the United States. The loss of breeding records during the American Civil War and the late beginning of the registration of American Thoroughbreds led many in the British racing establishment to doubt that the American-bred horses were purebred. In 1913, the Jockey Club and the owners of the General Stud Book passed a regulation named by the foreign press after the Jockey Club's senior steward, Lord Jersey, prohibiting the registration of horses in the book unless all of their ancestors had been registered. Despite protests from American breeders, the regulation remained in force until 1949. Among the factors influencing its relaxation were the racing success of ineligible horses in Europe and the damage caused to British and Irish breeders by the unavailability of French Thoroughbreds during and after the Second World War. In addition, by 1949 the possibly impure ancestors of the American bloodlines had receded far back in most horses' ancestry. ## Background Before the introduction in 1913 of what became popularly known—"with questionable taste" according to a correspondent writing in The Times—as the Jersey Act, Thoroughbred horses in the United Kingdom were registered in the General Stud Book, the stud book for British and Irish Thoroughbreds. The rules allowed a horse to be registered if all of the horse's ancestors were registered in the General Stud Book or if it had been bred outside of Britain or Ireland and was registered in the stud book of its country of origin. Overall the General Stud Book had the most stringent rules for registration of Thoroughbreds at the time, around 1900; other countries, including the United States, France, Australia and Russia, were considered by the British and Irish to be much laxer and to have allowed some non-Thoroughbred horses into their national stud books. The outlawing of race-track betting in parts of the United States between 1900 and 1913 led to a large influx of American-bred horses into Britain and Ireland, giving rise to fears among British breeders that they would be swamped by the American bloodlines and their own stock would become worthless. The biggest state to outlaw betting was New York, which passed the Hart–Agnew Law in 1908. By 1911, the average price for yearlings sold at auction was at a record low of \$230 (\$ as of 2023). Before 1900, most horses were imported into Britain to race, and rarely stayed for a breeding career. The outlawing of gambling resulted in large numbers of American horses that could no longer be supported, and many were shipped to Europe for racing. Because of the downturn in the horse market in the United States, it was assumed that most of the horses sent to Europe would stay there permanently and, after retirement from the racetrack, would enter their breeding careers outside of the United States. Between 1908 and 1913, over 1500 Thoroughbreds were exported from the United States. Those exported included 24 horses who had been or would later become champions – among them Artful, Colin, Henry of Navarre, Peter Pan, and Ballot. The American Stud Book, the registration book for American Thoroughbreds, was not founded until 1873, much later than the General Stud Book, and the rules for registration required only that a horse have five generations of ancestors in the American Stud Book or other national stud books, unlike the General Stud Book rules. In addition, many breeding records were destroyed during the American Civil War, as fighting during that conflict took place in noted American Thoroughbred breeding centers. The result was that most American Thoroughbreds in 1913 were unable to show an unblemished pedigree according to the General Stud Book rules. Adding to the problem was the fact that American horses were beginning to win the big horse races in England, starting with Iroquois, who won the 1881 Epsom Derby. J. B. Haggin, an American breeder and owner of Elmendorf Farm, had begun to ship large contingents of horses to England for sale, including the 1908 Grand National steeplechase winner Rubio, and the fear was that if other American breeders followed his lead, the English racing market would be overwhelmed. As a first step, the English racing authorities began to limit the number of training licences at Newmarket Racecourse, turning away a number of American breeders. The General Stud Book rules for registration were also amended in 1909 to restrict registration to horses whose ancestry could be traced entirely to horses already registered in the General Stud Book, but horses registered in other national stud books were still allowed to be imported and registered. ## Introduction The owners of the General Stud Book, Weatherbys, consulted with the Jockey Club, the United Kingdom's racing authority, and discussions were held about the problems in pedigrees recorded in the American Stud Book. At a meeting of the Jockey Club in spring 1913, Victor Child Villiers, Lord Jersey, the club's senior steward, proposed a resolution limiting the registration of American bloodlines. It passed unanimously in May, and a new regulation was placed in the General Stud Book, Volume 22: > No horse or mare can, after this date, be considered as eligible for admission unless it can be traced without flaw on both sire's and dam's side of its pedigree to horses and mares themselves already accepted in the earlier volumes of the book. Although named the Jersey Act by a critical foreign press, after Lord Jersey, the new regulation did not have the force of law as it was promulgated by the registration authorities of the Thoroughbred horse, not by the United Kingdom government. Nor was it promulgated by the Jockey Club, which had no authority over registration, only over racing matters. The regulation required that any horse registered in the General Stud Book trace in every line to a horse that had already been registered in the General Stud Book, effectively excluding most American-bred Thoroughbreds. ## Effects Because the new rule was not applied retroactively, all American-bred horses registered before 1913 remained on the register, and their descendants were also eligible for registration. Of the 7,756 mares in Volume 27 of the General Stud Book, published in 1933, 930 would have been ineligible under the new rule. The Jersey Act did have an immediate impact however, as the winner of the 1914 Epsom Derby, Durbar II, was ineligible for registration, as his dam, Armenia, was bred in the United States and was not herself eligible for the General Stud Book. The main problem for American breeders was the presence of the blood of Lexington in their breeding programs. Lexington's pedigree on his dam's side was suspect in the eyes of British racing authorities, and, as he had been the leading sire of racehorses in the United States for 16 years, his descendants were numerous. Most American-bred Thoroughbreds traced to Lexington at least once, and he was not the only horse with suspect bloodlines registered in the American Stud Book. Most British breeders thought the regulation necessary and welcomed it, whereas most American breeders found it insulting, and believed that it was intended merely to protect the British racehorse market. The rule did adversely affect many British breeders as well, though, including even one senior member of the Jockey Club, Lord Coventry, whose successful line of racehorses was ineligible for registration. Initially there was little foreign complaint or organized opposition, probably owing to the effect of the gambling bans in the United States on the domestic horse market. The American Jockey Club did not even remark on the Jersey Act in its official publication, the Racing Calendar, and no mention of it appears in the Jockey Club's meeting minutes for 1913. Contributing to the lack of outcry was a legal ruling in New York allowing oral betting at racetracks, which led to the growth of racing in the United States; by 1920 the American breeding market had rebounded and was booming. The Jersey Act did not prevent the racing of horses containing the banned bloodlines, as horses with the suspect breeding raced and won in England, but they were considered to be "half-bred". A number of American-bred horses carrying the lines of Lexington had already been imported into England, including Americus, Rhoda B, and Sibola, and because they were grandfathered in, they and their descendants were allowed to be registered in the General Stud Book. Nor did it prevent the racing of horses that were not registered in the General Stud Book; it just prevented registration in the General Stud Book. American bloodlines, whether registered in the General Stud Book or not, dominated English racing in the 1920s and 1930s. Horses that were ineligible for General Stud Book registration, but were allowed to race, were identified with a Maltese cross in programs and auction listings. A number of American breeders, including the then-chairman of the American Jockey Club, William Woodward, Sr., lobbied hard throughout the 1930s to have the regulation removed. Woodward, and other defenders of the American bloodlines, argued that the racing performance of the horses proved their purity, even if they could not produce papers that did so. Woodward declared in 1935 that "If we do not get together, we will grow apart." Those arguing for keeping the Jersey Act in effect pointed out that the General Stud Book is a record of bloodlines, not a work recording racing ability. The Jersey Act's major effect was the opposite of what was intended. In the years before the Second World War, British and Irish breeders had relied on imported Thoroughbreds from France to enrich their breeding lines, a source that was unavailable during the war, and concerns were beginning to be expressed that the situation might lead to excessive inbreeding. Additionally, by the end of the war American-bred lines were some of the most successful racing lines in the world, effectively making the British and Irish breeding programmes that did not use them second-rate, and harming the rebuilding of English racing. There were even calls for the creation of an international stud book to record all Thoroughbred pedigrees, thus eliminating any perceived slight on the bloodlines that were excluded from the General Stud Book. ## 1949 amendment Weatherbys, publishers of the Stud Book, approached the Jockey Club in 1948 to ask if it agreed that the Jersey Act was "too restrictive". The rule was subsequently modified in June 1949, after the racing careers of a number of horses such as Tourbillon and Djebel persuaded the Jockey Club to reconsider. A number of French-bred Thoroughbreds began to race in England after the Second World War, but because they carried American lines they were considered half-breds. In 1948 two of England's five classic races were won by half-bred horses, My Babu and Black Tarquin, prompting the Jockey Club to amend the rule in the preface to the General Stud Book, to state that: > Any animal claiming admission from now onwards must be able to prove satisfactorily some eight or nine crosses pure blood, to trace back for at least a century, and to show such performances of its immediate family on the Turf as to warrant the belief in the purity of its blood. The amendment removed the stigma of not being considered purebred from American-bred horses. A major consideration was that by the late 1940s most of the horses with suspect pedigrees were so far back in most horses' ancestry that it no longer made much sense to exclude them. Neither did it make much sense to exclude some of the most successful racehorses in Europe from registration. Weatherby's further amended its regulations in 1969, introducing the word "thoroughbred" to describe the horses registered in previous volumes of the General Stud Book. In 2006, Blood-Horse Publications, publisher of The Blood-Horse magazine, chose the "repeal" of the Jersey Act as the 39th most important moment in American Thoroughbred horse racing history.

Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line

Rail service in Sydney, New South Wales,Australia

The Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line (numbered T4, coloured azure blue) is a commuter railway line in the eastern and southern suburbs of Sydney and is a part of the Sydney Trains network. The line was constructed in the 1880s to Wollongong to take advantage of agricultural and mining potentials in the Illawarra area. In March 1926, it became the first railway in New South Wales to run electric train services. Today, the railway consists of three connected lines: - The original Illawarra line from the Sydney CBD to Waterfall - The Cronulla line from Sutherland to Cronulla, which opened in 1939 replacing an earlier tram service - The Eastern Suburbs line from the Sydney CBD to Bondi Junction, which opened in 1979 Operationally and historically, the entire line from the Illawarra Junction at Redfern to its terminus in Bomaderry on the South Coast was known as the Illawarra Line. However, since 1989, the suburban services to Waterfall and Cronulla have been marketed as the Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line and interurban services south to Wollongong and Bomaderry as the South Coast Line. The line is coloured an azure blue on Sydney Trains timetables and other promotional materials. ## Alignment ### Eastern Suburbs Line The Eastern Suburbs Line runs between Bondi Junction in Sydney's east and Eveleigh, just south of the Sydney central business district. It is mostly underground, and consists of 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) of bored tunnels and 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) of cut and cover tunnels, with only 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) above ground. In the Eastern Suburbs, three tunnels proceed in a westerly direction from Bondi Junction via Edgecliff and Kings Cross; in each of these tunnels there are stations. Between Bondi Junction and Edgecliff, there is a short open-air cutting in Woollahra, and between Edgecliff and Kings Cross, there is a short viaduct over Rushcutters Bay. From Kings Cross, the line proceeds west towards the Sydney Central Business District on a viaduct that passes over the suburb of Woolloomooloo and the Eastern Distributor. The line then passes into a tunnel underneath the Art Gallery of New South Wales to a station underneath Martin Place. Turning south, the line proceeds through Town Hall, Central and Redfern stations, before emerging behind the Eveleigh Railway Workshops. The line is double track throughout, with turnback sidings at Martin Place and Bondi Junction for citybound trains, and at Central for trains from Bondi Junction. ### Illawarra & Cronulla Lines The Illawarra Line commences at Illawarra Junction at Redfern and travels on the 'Illawarra' (eastern pair) tracks. A dive tunnel allows Intercity services from the South Coast Line to cross underneath the main suburban lines to access Central station. The Illawarra lines are also connected at this point to the Illawarra Relief Lines which emerge from underground and lead to the Eastern Suburbs Line. From Illawarra Junction, four tracks head south through Erskineville and St Peters to Sydenham station. The 'main' pair of tracks are used by Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line and South Coast Line trains and the 'local' pair by Bankstown Line and peak hour Airport & South Line trains. At Sydenham, the Bankstown railway line branches off, but the Airport & South Line trains continue along the Illawarra line until Wolli Creek, where a junction to the East Hills line exists. South of Wolli Creek station, a crossover allows trains from the 'main' pair of tracks to switch to the 'local' pair. This is used by peak hour all-stations Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line trains. The four track section ends at Hurstville. The line then continues as two tracks south towards Sutherland, crossing the Georges River via the Como railway bridge between Oatley and Como. At Sutherland the Cronulla line branches in an easterly direction. The main line then heads in a southerly direction, parallel to the Princes Highway to the west and bordering the Royal National Park on its eastern side until Waterfall, the last suburb in the Sydney metropolitan area. The track continues south from here as the South Coast Line through the Royal National Park towards the Illawarra region. ## History ### Main line construction The Illawarra line route was approved by the New South Wales Government in 1880. This route originated near the inner-city locality of Macdonaldtown and ran to Kiama via the locality of "Bottle Forest", a distance of 109 kilometres (68 mi). The route selected comprises the present-day route of the Macdonaldtown to Waterfall section of the Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line. On 6 April 1881, Governor Augustus Loftus assented to Act 44 Vic. No. 28, which provided £1,020,000 for the construction of this railway, and proposed that the first section of 37 kilometres (23 mi), constituting approximately the present suburban route, be completed by 30 September 1884. Almost immediately, concerns were raised about the new route's viability, most specifically over the cost of tunnelling between Waterfall and Otford to reach Wollongong. Work was suspended past the 24-kilometre (15 mi) point at Como, and Government surveyors were instructed to re-survey a route via the Port Hacking River that had originally been surveyed in 1873. Their work allayed concerns about the new route: although the new route had more tunnelling, excavation and sharp curves, the total cost of the "Bottle Forest" route was estimated at £130,175 less than the original Port Hacking route. The Minister for Works eventually agreed on this new route, although construction was again briefly halted when the contractors refused to recommence work on the disputed section. With new contractors hired, the line was complete to Hurstville by 15 October 1884, Waterfall by 9 March 1886, and the whole line to Kiama was opened officially in Wollongong on 22 June 1887. According to the official papers on the line's construction, when the line first opened for trains between Sydney and Sutherland construction was not quite complete, so excursion services initially ran on weekends only until the entire line was handed over. The first official train ran within the modern-day suburban area on 9 December 1885, although the line was closed once again between December 1885 and January 1886 to permit testing on the new bridge over the Georges River. ### Amplification and electrification The line was originally constructed as double track between Illawarra Junction and Hurstville with single track thereafter; however, its rising use meant that the line required duplication soon afterwards. The line was duplicated between Hurstville and Loftus Station (with the exception of the Como bridge over the Georges River) in April 1890, then southward to Waterfall by 12 December 1890. The section of track between Illawarra Junction and Hurstville was quadruplicated between 1913 and 1925. After duplication in 1890, the original lattice-girder Como Bridge across the Georges River was laid as gauntlet track. This arrangement remained in place for many decades, causing a notorious bottleneck on the line, until the New South Wales Government commissioned John Holland & Co to build a new bridge in 1969. Construction of the new bridge, made of prestressed concrete box girders, commenced in 1969 and was first used by the 18:17 service from Como on 19 November 1972. The old bridge, as well as a former alignment of the line between Mortdale and Oatley replaced in 1905, is now used as a rail trail for pedestrians and cyclists. The Illawarra Line was the first railway electrified in New South Wales, and was built in conjunction with the construction of the City Railway between Central and St James, opening on 1 March 1926, a few months before the line was connected to the new underground railway. By November 1926 the electric overhead had passed Sutherland and continued to the branch line constructed to the Royal National Park. The line between Loftus and Waterfall remained unelectrified until 1980 and was serviced by steam and then diesel railcars. ### Cronulla branch line A single track tramway line, with four stations and a goods siding, was opened on 12 June 1911 at a cost of £37,505. The route commenced at the southern end of Sutherland station, proceeded north-east to the Princes Highway, east along the Kingsway, then south past the site of the present rail terminus to Shelly Park in the centre of Cronulla. By 1932, the Cronulla tramway had closed. Competing bus services had begun to run with unrestricted competition, and the tram line by this time was so full with services that trams often ran late due to holdups at the crossing loops and passengers missed their connections at Sutherland. The line suffered large losses in its later years, and the effect of the Great Depression at the time forced it to cease its services, the last passenger service operating on 3 August 1931. The goods service continued until 12 January of the next year. Although the closure of the tramway allowed planning to go ahead for a railway, the planning for the replacement railway line suffered various delays in the 1930s due to funding issues: the line's construction competed with a proposal to electrify the Illawarra Line to Waterfall, and there were disputes over the point at which the line would connect to the main line. Two early proposals to join the line at Como and north of Sutherland Station were rejected. Despite the delays, Parliament finally gave approval to the line on 2 March 1936, and a route with five new stations was surveyed that would connect with the main line at the southern side of Sutherland station. The new line was opened on 16 December 1939. Although a crossing loop was installed at Caringbah Station and Gymea Station when the line was opened, the single track line prevented the expansion of services to the Cronulla peninsula, and so in the 1980s, it was decided to duplicate a 3.5-kilometre (2.2 mi) section of the line between Gymea and Caringbah, with Gymea, Miranda and Caringbah all receiving island platforms. The new section was opened on 15 July 1985. In the 2000s, the remaining single track sections were duplicated. These opened on 19 April 2010. ### Eastern Suburbs Railway In 1916, a plan for the city railways, and an Eastern Suburbs extension was drawn up by the Chief Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway Construction, John Bradfield. It was given subsequent approval by Parliament. Bradfield's plan entailed building a City Circle loop, with an extension through to the Eastern Suburbs by means of a viaduct over Woolloomooloo. The line was to extend to Rosebery and Waterloo, with ten stations, linking with the Illawarra Line near Erskineville station. Upon the passing of the City and Suburban Electric Railways (Amendment) Act in 1947, construction finally commenced on a variation of the Bradfield's proposal. Two lines would be built: one proceeding on a viaduct out to Kings Cross, then eventually to Bondi Beach. Another line would head from St James via Taylor Square and the Sydney Cricket Ground, extending to Kingsford, with a proposal to extend from Taylor Square to Coogee. Construction commenced on sites around Central station but ceased in 1952 due to a recession. Work remained abandoned for over a decade. In 1967, construction again commenced on yet another variation on Bradfield's design. This involved the earlier route used towards Bondi Junction through Woolloomooloo, then an extension towards Kingsford with five extra stations at Charing Cross, Frenchmans Road, Randwick, University and Kingsford. The New South Wales Government awarded the contract for the civil and structural design to the successful Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Authority. An official Legislative Assembly inquiry in 1976, however, recommended that costs on the project be cut, and the extension to Kingsford, a proposed station at Woollahra, and the expansion of concourse areas at Bondi Junction and Martin Place stations did not proceed. Nonetheless, it was resolved to fully integrate the railway with the Illawarra line. The Eastern Suburbs Railway opened between Central station and Bondi Junction on 23 June 1979. Initially, trains ran as shuttle services between Central and Bondi Junction; it was not until a year later that work was finished to integrate the lines. A double-track junction with the Illawarra Line at Erskineville south of Illawarra Junction, twin single track tunnels connecting to the Eastern Suburbs Railway platforms at Central, a set of underground platforms at Redfern and a turnback tunnel at Martin Place opened to complete the project on 20 July 1980. Bondi Junction had originally been intended only as an intermediate turnback station before the extension to Kingsford was abandoned. As part of the Rail Clearways Program, the \$77 million Bondi Junction Turnback project saw a new rail crossover was built between the single-track tunnels, enabling 20 trains an hour, up from 14, to use the station. The work was completed in time for the introduction of a new timetable on 28 May 2006. ## Operation ### Trains In addition to Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line trains, the Illawarra railway line carries interurban and freight traffic. The Cronulla branch line and the Eastern Suburbs Railway are exclusively used by passenger trains. Historically, passenger services were provided to the Sydney Central by steam locomotives. The first services to Hurstville were run by steam locomotives of the Q.158 and R.285 classes. When the City Underground opened to St James in 1926, a new electric service was provided to run there. From the time when the line to the Royal National Park was electrified, passengers received a steam train service at first, then when this became expensive, it was replaced by a rail motor service. This arrangement continued until the line was electrified to Waterfall, and the Eastern Suburbs Line was opened. In 1979, the Eastern Suburbs Line being the first line to only use S set double-decker rolling stock. The current running operations for passenger services have remained generally unchanged since 1981 with the integration of the Illawarra line and the Eastern Suburbs Railway. Suburban services utilise Erskineville Junction and proceed to Central and Bondi Junction. The last S sets were withdrawn from Mortdale Maintenance Depot in March 2013; all services now provided by Tangara and OSCAR sets (as the infrastructure and electrical requirements of newer models are incompatible with the line). Trains typically operate with 12 services per hour in peak, six services per hour in off-peak, and four to six services per hour on weekends and public holidays. ### Map ### Stations The line currently has 33 operating stations. Only three stations or platforms have closed, the two stations on the Royal National Park Branch (the main station, which closed in 1991, and the platform for the Scout's Camp, which closed in 1947), and the station on the Woronora Cemetery branch, which also closed in 1947. ### Stopping patterns The stopping patterns on the Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line have generally been determined by several different termini. The steam era saw these termini change quite frequently as more terminating facilities were constructed: the first trains on the line after the Waterfall extension in 1887 either ran to Hurstville (16 per day), Sutherland (two per day) and Waterfall (two per day), with all trains stopping at every intermediate station. By 1907, however, Como and Oatley had been added to the list of termini, with nine and seven trains per day respectively. Seven trains per day at this time also ran to Sutherland, and one to Waterfall. Most trains terminated at Hurstville. Since electrification, the terminus stations for suburban trains have remained consistent. From 1926 trains terminated at either Hurstville, Sutherland and The National Park. With the opening of the Cronulla branch in 1939, Cronulla become the fourth major terminus. In 1980 Waterfall was electrified and replaced The Royal National Park as a terminus, having been served by a diesel-operated shuttle service until then. - ● – All trains stop - ◐ – Some services do not stop - ▼ – Only outbound trains stop - ▲ – Only inbound trains stop - \| – Trains do not stop ### Patronage The following table shows the patronage of Sydney Trains network for the year ending 30 June 2022. ## Performance In 2009–2010, 97.65% of all Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra services ran on-time, ranking it the most reliable line on the CityRail network. In the 2019–2020 financial year, this figure was 95.2%. Planning experts recognised a need to expand capacity on the Eastern Suburbs Line. In 2002, former CityRail chairman Ron Christie released a report, the "Long-term strategic plan for rail", which outlined the critical infrastructure that would need to be built between then and 2050 to ensure the long-term survival and operation of the CityRail network. The report highlighted the problems facing the network at that time and noted that capacity on Illawarra Line trains was often at 120%, and that 180% was not unexpected. Christie said that by 2011 there would be no capacity on the Eastern Suburbs Line for trains coming from the Illawarra Line. To address this, the NSW Government constructed the Bondi Junction Turnback, which enables an additional six trains per hour to terminate at the station. To take advantage of the new infrastructure, a new timetable was introduced in May 2006 which reduced the overcrowding. A second project, the full duplication of the Cronulla branch line, was completed in 2010. This increases the capacity of the branch line from four to eight trains per hour. The line between Oatley, Sutherland and Cronulla also received signalling upgrades to allow more services to run at shorter intervals. A new timetable with extra services was introduced on 10 October 2010. It was proposed in the 2007 NSW State Plan that by 2017, the line capacity between Hurstville and Sutherland will be amplified to allow extra services to and from Cronulla, as well as for services accessing the Mortdale Maintenance Centre. The 2010 Metropolitan Transport Plan made no mention of the project. As of 2021, this project had not taken place but in August 2020, the New South Wales Government had announced an alternative project, the installation of a new rail crossover at Hurstville that would enable 20% more services in peak hour. The crossover project is planned to be completed by 2022. ## Metro/light rail proposals Over the years, there have been a number of proposals to replace/supplement all/part of the Illawarra line with metro/light rail services. None of these have eventuated, as of 2023. - Co-ordinator General of the state's rail industry Ron Christie's "Long-term strategic plan for rail" report issued in 2001, suggested that several "metro" lines be built to service new areas and to relieve capacity on existing lines. These included a metro line to supplement the Illawarra Line. The route would go from Cronulla to Miranda along the existing tracks, then along a reserved corridor for the F6 Southern Freeway up to Sydney Airport. The line would then extend to the Sydney CBD then to Sydney's Northern Beaches via Chatswood. Christie suggested that even if the entire line were not to be built, the first stage between Cronulla, the Airport and the City would provide "essential capacity relief" for the Illawarra line which would be "severely capacity-constrained" within two decades. Both heavy rail and light rail were mooted as alternatives. - Christie was not the only person to suggest the F6 Corridor as an alternative. In 2002, the then Minister for Transport Carl Scully officially abandoned the corridor, reserved since 1951 for the extension of the Southern Freeway north to St Peters, and suggested that light rail, bus-only roads or high-frequency train services could run on the corridor. He wished to encourage innovative public transport solutions in the area, while maintaining the green space available near Botany Bay. The plan received support from environmental groups, with environmental transport group EcoTransit proposing their own 25.5 km (15.8 mi) light rail line to supplement the Illawarra Line on the reservation, called the "Bay Light Express". - Since 2005, however, the future of an alternative corridor was in doubt, with the then State Treasurer Michael Costa announcing that the corridor would again be reserved for a motorway. By 2019, construction of the first stage of the M6 Motorway had been approved for part of the corridor, between Arncliffe and Kogarah. - In 2012 when the new Sydney Metro Northwest was announced, it was proposed that at a later date the line would be extended across Sydney Harbour and then split between Bankstown and Hurstville on the Illawarra line. However subsequent plans no longer mention the Illawarra Line. ## See also Operators and companies connected to the line - Sydney Trains – operator of services on the line. - Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation – State-owned corporation constructing the upgrade to the Cronulla Line. Other railways in the area - Illawarra line – connects to the line at its southern end. - Trams in Sydney – details on other tramway services in the Southern Suburbs of Sydney in the 19th and early 20th centuries. General articles on railways in Sydney - List of Sydney railway stations - Railways in Sydney - Rail transport in New South Wales - Sydney underground railways – other underground lines in Sydney

Eadred

Eadred (c. 923 – 23 November 955) was King of the English from 26 May 946 until his death. He was the younger son of Edward the Elder and his third wife Eadgifu, and a grandson of Alfred the Great. His elder brother, Edmund, was killed trying to protect his seneschal from an attack by a violent thief. Edmund's two sons, Eadwig and Edgar, were then young children, so Eadred became king. He suffered from ill health in the last years of his life and he died at the age of a little over thirty, having never married. He was succeeded successively by his nephews, Eadwig and Edgar. Eadred's elder half-brother Æthelstan inherited the kingship of England south of the Humber in 924, and conquered the south Northumbrian Viking kingdom of York in 927. Edmund and Eadred both inherited kingship of the whole kingdom, lost it shortly afterwards when York accepted Viking kings, and recovered it by the end of their reigns. In 954 the York magnates expelled their last king, Erik Bloodaxe, and Eadred appointed Osullf, the Anglo-Saxon ruler of the north Northumbrian territory of Bamburgh, as the first ealdorman of the whole of Northumbria. Eadred had been very close to Edmund and inherited many of his leading advisers, such as his mother Eadgifu, Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Æthelstan, ealdorman of East Anglia, who was so powerful that he was known as the 'Half-King'. Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury and future Archbishop of Canterbury, was a close friend and adviser, and Eadred appears to have authorised Dunstan to draft charters when he became too ill to attend meetings of the witan (King's Council) in his last years. The English Benedictine Reform did not reach fruition until the reign of Edgar, but Eadred was a strong supporter in its early stages. He was close to two of its leaders, Æthelwold, whom he appointed Abbot of Abingdon, and Dunstan. However, like earlier kings he did not share the view of the circle around Æthelwold that Benedictine monasticism was the only worthwhile religious life and he appointed Ælfsige, a married man with a son, as Bishop of Winchester. ## Background In the ninth century the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia came under increasing attack from Viking raids, culminating in invasion by the Danish Viking Great Heathen Army in 865. By 878, they had overrun East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia, and nearly conquered Wessex, but in that year the West Saxons fought back under Alfred the Great and achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Edington. In the 880s and 890s the Anglo-Saxons ruled Wessex and western Mercia, but the rest of England was under Viking rule. Alfred constructed a network of burhs (fortified sites), and these helped him to frustrate renewed Viking attacks in the 890s with the assistance of his son-in-law, Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, and his elder son Edward, who became king when Alfred died in 899. In 909, Edward sent a force of West Saxons and Mercians to attack the Northumbrian Danes and the following year the Vikings retaliated with a raid on Mercia. While they were marching back to Northumbria, they were caught by an Anglo-Saxon army and decisively defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall, ending the threat from the Northumbrian Vikings for a generation. In the 910s Edward and Æthelflæd – his sister and Æthelred's widow – extended Alfred's network of fortresses and conquered Viking-ruled eastern Mercia and East Anglia. When Edward died in 924, he controlled all England south of the Humber. Edward was succeeded by his eldest son Æthelstan, who seized control of Northumbria in 927, thus becoming the first king of all England. Soon afterwards Welsh kings and the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde acknowledged his overlordship. After this, he styled himself in charters by titles such as "king of the English", or grandiosely, "king of the whole of Britain". In 934, he invaded Scotland and in 937, an alliance of armies of Scotland, Strathclyde, and the Vikings invaded England. Æthelstan secured a decisive victory at the Battle of Brunanburh, cementing his dominant position in Britain. Æthelstan died in October 939 and he was succeeded by his half-brother and Eadred's full brother Edmund. He was the first king to succeed to the throne of all England, but he soon lost control of the north. By the end of the year Anlaf Guthfrithson, the Viking king of Dublin, had crossed the sea to become king of York. He also invaded Mercia and Edmund was forced to surrender the Five Boroughs of north-east Mercia to him. Guthfrithson died in 941 and in 942, Edmund was able to recover the Five Boroughs. In 944, he recovered full control of England by expelling the Viking kings of York. On 26 May 946 he was stabbed to death trying to protect his seneschal from attack by a convicted outlaw at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, and as his sons were young children Eadred became king. ## Family and early life Eadred's father, Edward the Elder, had three wives, eight or nine daughters, several of whom married Continental royalty, and five sons. Æthelstan, the son of Edward's first wife, Ecgwynn, was born around 894, but she probably died around the time of Alfred's death, as by 901 Edward was married to Ælfflæd. In about 919 he married Eadgifu, who had two sons, Edmund and Eadred. According to the twelfth-century chronicler William of Malmesbury, Edmund was about eighteen years old when he succeeded to the throne in 939, which dates his birth to 920–921, and their father Edward died in 924, so Eadred was born around 923. He had one or two full sisters. Eadburh was a nun at Winchester who was later venerated as a saint. William of Malmesbury gives Eadred a second full sister called Eadgifu like her mother, who married Louis, prince of Aquitaine. William's account is accepted by the historians Ann Williams and Sean Miller, but Æthelstan's biographer Sarah Foot argues that she did not exist, and that William confused her with Ælfgifu, a daughter of Ælfflæd. Eadred grew up with his brother at Æthelstan's court, and probably also with two important Continental exiles, his nephew Louis, future King of the West Franks, and Alain, future Duke of Brittany. According to William of Malmesbury, Æthelstan showed great affection towards Edmund and Eadred: "mere infants at his father's death, he brought them up lovingly in childhood, and when they grew up gave them a share in his kingdom". At a royal assembly shortly before Æthelstan's death in 939, Edmund and Eadred attested charter S 446, which granted land to their full sister, Eadburh. They both attested as regis frater (king's brother). This is the only charter of Æthelstan attested by Eadred. Eadgifu and Eadred attested many of Edmund's charters, showing a high degree of family cooperation; initially Eadgifu attested first, but from sometime in late 943 or early 944 Eadred took precedence, perhaps reflecting his growing authority. Eadgifu attested around one-third of Edmund's charters, always as regis mater (king's mother), including all grants to religious institutions and individuals. Eadred attested over half, and Pauline Stafford comments: "No other adult male of the West Saxon house was ever given such prominence before his accession." ## Reign ### Battle for control of Northumbria Like Edmund, Eadred inherited the whole English kingdom, but soon lost Northumbria and had to fight to get it back. The situation was complicated due to the number of rival factions in Northumbria. The Viking Anlaf Sihtricson (also called Olaf Sihtricson and Amlaib Cuaran) ruled Dublin and the southern Northumbrian kingdom of York at different periods. When king of York in the early 940s he had accepted baptism with Edmund as his godfather, indicating submission to his rule, and his coins followed English designs, but Edmund had expelled him in 944. Both Anlaf and the Norse (Norwegian) prince Erik Bloodaxe ruled York for periods during Eadred's reign. Erik issued coins with a Viking sword design and represented a more serious threat to West Saxon power than Anlaf. The York magnates were key players, led by the powerful Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, who periodically made bids for independence by accepting Viking kings, but submitted to southern rule at other times. In the view of the historian Marios Costambeys, Wulfstan's influence in Northumbria appears to have been greater than Erik's. Osulf, the Anglo-Saxon ruler of the north Northumbrian territory of Bamburgh, supported Eadred when it was in his own interest. The sequence of events is very unclear because different manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contradict each other, and they also conflict with the evidence of charters, which are the only contemporary sources. Charters of 946, 949–50 and 955 call Eadred ruler of the Northumbrians, and these provide evidence of periods when York submitted to southern rule. Following Edmund's death, Charter S 521 states that "it happened that Eadred, his uterine brother, [was] chosen in his stead by the nobles". According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he immediately "reduced all Northumbria under his rule" and obtained promises of obedience from the Scots. He may have invaded Northumbria in response to a rebellion supported by the Scots. He was crowned by Archbishop Oda of Canterbury on 16 August 946 at Kingston upon Thames, attended by Hywel Dda, king of Deheubarth in south Wales, Wulfstan and Osulf. The following year at Tanshelf, near the border between Northumbria and Mercia, Wulfstan and the other York magnates pledged allegiance to him. The York magnates soon reneged on their promises and accepted Erik as king. Eadred responded by leading an army to Ripon, where he burnt down the Minster, no doubt to punish Wulfstan, as it was at the centre of his richest estate. The Northumbrians sought revenge: according to version D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "when the king was on his way home, the army (which) was in York overtook the king's army at Castleford, and they made a great slaughter there. Then the king became so angry that he wished to march back into the land and destroy it utterly. When the councillors of the Northumbrians understood that, they deserted Erik and paid to King Eadred compensation for their act." Within a year or two they again changed sides and installed Anlaf Sihtricson as king. In 952 Eadred arrested Wulfstan and in the same year Erik displaced Anlaf, but in 954 the York magnates again threw out Erik and returned to English rule, this time not due to an invasion but by the choice of the northerners, and the change proved to be permanent. Erik was assassinated shortly afterwards, possibly at the instigation of Osulf, and the historian Frank Stenton comments that the time was past when an individual adventurer could establish a dynasty in England. Wulfstan was later released, probably in early 955, but he was apparently not allowed to resume his archbishopric and instead given the bishopric of Dorchester-on-Thames. Eadred then appointed Osulf as the first ealdorman of the whole of Northumbria. Osulf's position was probably so strong that the king had no choice but to appoint him, and it was not until the next century that southern kings were able to make their own choice of ealdormen in Bamburgh itself. In his will, Eadred left 1600 pounds to be used for protection of his people from famine or to buy peace from a heathen army, showing that he did not regard England as safe from attack. ### Administration Charters issued in the 930s and the 940s suggest continuity of royal government and smooth transitions between the reigns of Æthelstan, Edmund and Eadred. Eadred's principal councillors were mainly people he had inherited from his brother Edmund, and in a few cases went back to his half-brother Æthelstan. Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Ealdorman Æthelstan of East Anglia, had been advisers of King Æthelstan who had become dominant under Edmund. Ealdorman Æthelstan's power under Edmund and Eadred was so great that he became known as Æthelstan Half-King. His prestige was further increased when his wife Ælfwynn became foster-mother to Edmund's younger son Edgar following his mother's early death. The Half-King's brother Eadric was ealdorman of central Wessex, and Eadred granted him land in Sussex which Eadric gave to Abingdon Abbey. Dunstan, the Abbot of Glastonbury and a future Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of Eadred's most trusted friends and advisers, and he attested many of Eadred's charters. Eadgifu had been sidelined under the rule of her stepson Æthelstan, but she became powerful under the rule of her own sons Edmund and Eadred. Ælfgar, the father of Edmund's second wife Æthelflæd, was ealdorman of Essex from 946 to 951. Edmund presented Ælfgar with a sword decorated with gold on its hilt and silver on its sheath, which Ælfgar subsequently gave to Eadred. Ælfgar consistently attested last among the ealdormen, and he may have been subordinate to Æthelstan Half-King. Two thegns, Wulfric Cufing and another Wulfric who was Dunstan's brother, received massive grants of land from Edmund and Eadred, showing that royal patronage could transform minor local figures into great nobles. Eadred is one of the few later Anglo-Saxon kings for whom no law code is known to survive, although he may have issued the Hundred Ordinance. Ealdormen issued legal judgments on behalf of the king at a local level. One example during Eadred's reign concerned the theft of a woman, probably a slave. A man called Æthelstan of Sunbury was later found to have her in his possession and could not prove he had acquired her legally. He surrendered possession and paid compensation to the owner, but Ealdorman Byrhtferth ordered him to pay his wer (the value of his life) to the king, and when Æthelstan could not pay Byrhtferth required him to forfeit his Sunbury estate. In 952 Eadred ordered "a great slaughter" of the people of Thetford in revenge for their murder of Abbot Eadhelm, perhaps of St Augustine's, Canterbury. This was the usual punishment for crimes committed by communities. The historian Cyril Hart suggests that Eadhelm may have been trying to establish a new monastery there, against the opposition of the local inhabitants. Force was fundamental to West Saxon kings' domination of England, and the historian George Molyneaux sees the Thetford slaughter as an example of their "intermittently unleashed crude but terrifying displays of coercive power". The Anglo-Saxon court was peripatetic, travelling around the country, and there was no fixed capital. Like other later Anglo-Saxon kings, Eadred's royal estates were mainly in Wessex and he and his court travelled between them. All known locations in Eadred's itinerary were in Wessex, apart from Tanshelf. There was also no central treasury, but Eadred did travel with his sacred relics, which were in the custody of his mass priests. According to Dunstan's first biographer, Eadred "handed over to Dunstan his most valuable possessions: many land charters, the old treasure of earlier kings, and various riches of his own acquiring, all to be guarded faithfully behind the walls of his monastery". However, Dunstan was only one of the people entrusted with Eadred's treasures; there were others such as Wulfhelm, Bishop of Wells. When Eadred was dying, he sent for the property so that he could distribute it, but he died before Dunstan arrived with his share. Ceremonial was important. A charter issued at Easter 949 describes Eadred as "exalted with royal crowns", displaying the king as an exceptional and charismatic character set apart from other men. ### Charters The period between 925 and 975 was the golden age of Anglo-Saxon royal diplomas, when they were at their peak as instruments of royal government, and kings used them to project images of royal power and as the most reliable means of communication between the court and the country. Most charters between late in Æthelstan's reign and midway through Eadred's were written in the king's writing office in a style called the "diplomatic mainstream", for example, the charter which is displayed below, written by the scribe called "Edmund C". He wrote two charters dating to Edmund's reign and three in Eadred's. The style almost disappears between around 950 and the end of Eadred's reign. The number of surviving charters declines, with none dating to the years 952 and 954. Charters from this period belong to two other traditions. The reason for the dramatic change in around 950 is not known, but may be due to Eadred transferring responsibility for charter production from the royal writing office to other centres when his health declined in his last years. One alternative tradition is found in the "alliterative charters", produced between 940 and 956, which display frequent use of alliteration and unusual vocabulary, in a style influenced by Aldhelm, the seventh-century bishop of Sherborne. They are the work of a scribe who was very learned, almost certainly someone in the circle of Cenwald, bishop of Worcester or perhaps the bishop himself. They have Mercian antecedents and most relate to estates north of the Thames. Seven charters of this type survive from 949 to 951, half the total for those years, and another two are dated 955. The historian Simon Keynes comments: The "alliterative" charters represent an extraordinary body of material, intimately related to each other, and deeply interesting in their own right as works of learning and literature. Judged as diplomas, they are inventive, spirited, and delightfully chaotic. They stand apart from the diplomatic mainstream, yet they seem nonetheless to emerge from the very heart of the ceremonies of conveyance conducted at royal assemblies. The other alternative tradition is found in the "Dunstan B" charters, which are very different from the "alliterative" charters, with a style which is plain and unpretentious, and which dispenses with the usual initial invocation and proem. They are associated with Dunstan and Glastonbury Abbey, and all the ones issued in Eadred's reign are for estates in the south and west. They were produced between 951 and 986, but they appear to be foreshadowed by a charter of 949 granting Reculver minster and its lands to Christ Church, Canterbury, which claims to be written by Dunstan "with his own fingers". The document is not original and is thought to be a production of the later tenth century, but there are no anachronisms and it has many stylistic features of the "Dunstan B" charters, so it is probably an "improved" version of an original charter. Further evidence associating Dunstan with the charters is provided by commentaries on a manuscript of Caesarius of Arles's Expositio in Apocalypsin, written on Dunstan's order, which has a script so similar to that of the only "Dunstan B" charter to survive as an original manuscript that it is likely that both documents were written by Glastonbury scribes. The charter is described by Keynes as "well disciplined and thoroughly professional". Eight charters of all types survive dating to 953 and 955, out of which six belong to this tradition and two are "alliterative". The six "Dunstan B" charters are not witnessed by the king, and Dunstan was probably authorised to produce charters in the king's name when he was too ill to carry out his duties. In the 940s the draftsmen of "mainstream" charters used the title "king of the English" and in the early 950s "Dunstan B" charters described Eadred as "king of Albion", whereas "alliterative" charters adopted complex political analysis in the wording of Eadred's title, and only after the final conquest of York described him as "king of the whole of Britain". Several "alliterative" charters, including one issued on the occasion of Eadred's coronation, use expressions such as "the government of kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons and Northumbrians, of the pagans and the Britons". Keynes observes: "It would be dangerous, of course, to press such evidence too far; but it is interesting nonetheless to be reminded that in the eyes of at least one observer, the whole was no greater than the sum of its component parts. ### Coinage The only coin in common use in late Anglo-Saxon England was the silver penny. Halfpennies were very rare but a few have been found dating to Eadred's reign, one of which has been cut in half to make a farthing. The average weight of a penny of around 24 grains in Edward the Elder's reign gradually declined until Edgar's pre-reform coinage, and by Eadred's time the reduction was about 3 grains. With a few exceptions, the high silver content of 85 to 90% in previous reigns was maintained under Eadred. One common coin type in Eadred's reign is designated BC (bust crowned), with the king's head on the obverse. Many BC coins are based on an original style of Æthelstan's reign but are of crude workmanship. Some were produced by moneyers who had worked in the previous reign, but there were over thirty new moneyers producing BC coins, out of which nearly twenty are represented by a single coin, so it is likely that there were other moneyers producing BC coins whose coins have not yet been found. The H (Horizontal) type, with no king's bust on the obverse and the moneyer's name horizontally on the reverse, was even more common, with more than eighty moneyers known for Eadred's reign, many only from single specimens. The dominant styles in Eadred's reign were HT1 in the south and east, with trefoils top and bottom on the reverse (see right), and HR1 in the north midlands, with rosettes instead of trefoils, produced by around sixty moneyers and the most plentiful style in Eadred's reign. In Northumbria and the north-east in Eadred's reign there were a few moneyers with a large output, whereas coins in the rest of the country were produced by many different moneyers. The mint town is shown on some BC coins, but rarely on H types. A few HRs show Derby and Chester, and one HT1 coin survives with an Oxford inscription and one with Canterbury. The leading York moneyer for almost the whole of Eadred's reign was Ingelgar (see right). He produced high-standard coins for Eadred, Anlaf and Erik and worked until the last months of Eadred's reign, when he was replaced by Heriger. Another large-scale moneyer was Hunred, who may have operated at Derby when York was in Viking hands. ### Religion The major religious movement of the tenth century, the English Benedictine Reform, reached its peak under Edgar, but Eadred was a strong supporter in its early stages. Another proponent was Archbishop Oda, who was a monk with a strong connection with the leading Continental centre, Fleury Abbey. When Eadred came to the throne, two of the future leaders of the movement were at Glastonbury Abbey: Dunstan had been appointed abbot by Edmund, and he had been joined by Æthelwold, the future Bishop of Winchester. The reformers also had lay supporters such as Æthelstan Half-King and Eadgifu, who were especially close to Dunstan. The historian Nicholas Brooks comments: "The evidence is indirect and inadequate but may suggest that Dunstan drew much of his support from the regiment of powerful women in early tenth-century Wessex and from Eadgifu in particular." According to Dunstan's first biographer, Eadred urged Dunstan to accept the vacant see of Crediton, and when he refused Eadred got Eadgifu to invite Dunstan to a meal where she could use her "woman's gift of words" to persuade him, but her attempt was unsuccessful. During Eadred's reign, Æthelwold asked for permission to go abroad to gain a deeper understanding of the scriptures and a monk's religious life, no doubt at a reformed monastery such as Fleury. He may have thought that the discipline at Glastonbury was too lax. Eadred refused his mother's advice that he should not allow such a wise man to leave his kingdom, instead appointing him as abbot of Abingdon, which was then served by secular priests and which Æthelwold transformed into a leading Benedictine abbey. Eadred supported the community, including granting it a 100 hide royal estate at Abingdon, and Eadgifu was an even more generous donor. Eadred travelled to Abingdon to plan the monastery there and personally measured the foundations where he proposed to raise the walls. Æthelwold then invited him to dine and he accepted. The king ordered that the mead should flow plentifully and the doors were locked so that none would be seen leaving the royal dinner. Some Northumbrian thegns accompanying the king got drunk, as was their custom, and were very merry when they left. However, Eadred died before the work could be carried out, and the building was not constructed until Edgar came to the throne. Supporters of monastic reform were devoted to cults of saints and their relics. When Eadred burnt down Ripon Minster during his invasion of Northumbria, Oda had the relics of Saint Wilfrid, and Ripon's copy of the Vita Sancti Wilfrithi by Eddius (Stephen of Ripon), seized and brought to Canterbury. The Vita provided the basis for a new metrical life of Wilfrid (Breuiloquium Vitae Wilfridi) by Frithegod, a Frankish scholar in Oda's household, and a preface in Oda's name (although probably drafted by Frithegod) justified the theft by accusing Ripon of scandalous neglect of Wilfrid's relics. Michael Lapidge sees the destruction of the minster as providing the pretext for "a notorious furtum sacrum" (sacred theft). Wilfrid had been an assertively independent northern bishop and in the historian David Rollason's view the theft may have been intended to prevent the relics from becoming a focus for opposition to the West Saxon dynasty. Kings were also avid collectors of relics, which demonstrated their piety and increased their prestige, and Eadred left bequests in his will to priests he had appointed to look after his own relics. Under Edgar, the view of Æthelwold and his circle that Benedictine monasticism was the only worthwhile form of religious life became dominant, but this was not the view of earlier kings such as Eadred. In 951 he appointed Ælfsige, a married man with a son, as bishop of Winchester. Ælfsige was not a reformer and was later remembered as hostile to the cause. Eadred's reign saw a continuation of a trend away from ecclesiastical beneficiaries of charters. More than two-thirds of beneficiaries in Æthelstan's reign were ecclesiastics and two-thirds were laymen in Edmund's. Under Eadred and Eadwig, three-quarters were laymen. In the mid-tenth century, some religious noblewomen received grants of land without being members of communities of nuns. Æthelstan granted two estates, Edmund seven and Eadred four. After this the practice ceased abruptly, apart from one further donation. The significance of the donations is uncertain, but the most likely explanation is that some aristocratic women were granted the estates so that they could pursue a religious vocation in their own way, whether by establishing a nunnery or living a religious life in their own homes. In 953 Eadred granted land in Sussex to his mother, and she is described in the charter as famula Dei, which probably means that she adopted a religious life while retaining her own estates, and did not enter a monastery. ### Learning Glastonbury and Abingdon were leading centres of learning, and Dunstan and Æthelwold were both excellent Latinists, but little is known of the studies at their monasteries. Oda was also a competent Latin scholar and his household at Canterbury was the other main centre of learning in the mid-tenth century. The most brilliant scholar there was Frithegod. His poem Breuiloquium Vitae Wilfridi is described by Lapidge, an expert on medieval Latin literature, as "perhaps the most remarkable monument of tenth-century Anglo-Latin literature". It is "one of the most brilliantly ingenious – but also damnably difficult – Latin products of Anglo-Saxon England", which "may be dubiously described as the 'masterpiece' of Anglo-Latin hermeneutic style". Frithegod was a tutor to Oda's nephew Oswald, a future Archbishop of York and the third leader of the monastic reform movement. Frithegod returned to Francia when his patron Oda died in 958. ## Eadred's will Eadred's will is one of only two wills of Anglo-Saxon kings to survive. It reads: In nomine Domini. This is King Eadred's will. In the first place, he presents to the foundation wherein he desires that his body shall rest, two gold crosses and two swords with hilts of gold, and four hundred pounds. Item, he gives to the Old Minster at Winchester three estates, namely Downton, Damerham and Calne. Item, he gives to the New Minster three estates, namely Wherwell, Andover and Clere; and to the Nunnaminster, Shalbourne, Thatcham and Bradford. Item, he gives to the Nunnaminster at Winchester thirty pounds. and thirty to Wilton, and thirty to Shaftesbury. Item, he gives sixteen hundred pounds for the redemption of his soul, and the good of his people, that they may be able to purchase for themselves relief from want and from the heathen army, if they need [to do so]. Of this the Archbishop at Christchurch is to receive four hundred pounds, for the relief of the people of Kent and Surrey and Sussex and Berkshire; and if anything happen to the bishop, the money shall remain in the monastery, in the charge of the members of the council who are in that county. And Ælfsige, bishop of the see of Winchester, is to receive four hundred pounds, two hundred for Hampshire and one hundred each for Wiltshire and Dorsetshire; and if anything happen to him, it shall remain-as in a similar case mentioned above-in the charge of the members of the council who are in that county. Item, Abbot Dunstan is to receive two hundred pounds and to keep it at Glastonbury for the people of Somerset and Devon; and if anything happen to him, arrangements similar to those above shall be made. Item, Bishop Ælfsige is to receive the two hundred pounds left over, and keep [the money] at the episcopal see at Winchester, for whichever shire may need it. And Bishop Oscetel is to receive four hundred pounds, and keep it at the episcopal see at Dorchester for the Mercians, in accordance with the arrangement described above. Now Bishop Wulfhelm has that sum of four hundred pounds (?). Item, gold to the amount of two thousand mancuses is to be taken and minted into mancuses; and the archbishop is to receive one portion, and Bishop Ælfsige a second, and Bishop Oscetel a third, and they are to distribute them throughout the bishoprics for the sake of God and for the redemption of my soul. Item, I give to my mother the estates at Amesbury and Wantage and Basing, and all the booklands which I have in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, and all those which she has previously had. Item I give to the archbishop two hundred mancuses of gold, reckoning the hundred at a hundred and twenty. And to each of my bishops one hundred and twenty mancuses of gold. And to each of my earls one hundred and twenty mancuses of gold. And to each [duly] appointed seneschal, and each appointed chamberlain and butler, eighty mancuses of gold. And to each of my chaplains whom I have put in charge of my relics, fifty mancuses of gold and five pounds in silver. And five pounds to each of the other priests. And thirty muncuses of gold to each [duly] appointed steward, and to every ecclesiastic who has been appointed (?) since I succeeded to the throne, and to every member of my household, in whatever capacity he be employed, unless he be.......to the royal palaces. Item, I desire that twelve almsmen be chosen on each of the estates mentioned above, and if anything happen to any of them, another is to be put appointed his place; and this is to hold good so long as Christianity endures, to the glory of God and the redemption of my soul; and if anyone refuses to carry it out, his estate is to revert to the place where my body shall rest. The will is described by Stenton as "the chief authority for the pre-Conquest royal household". It shows that discthegns (seneschals) served at his table and that the other principal officers were butlers and hræglthegns (keepers of the wardrobe). All the estates named in the will are in Wessex, reflecting the concentration of royal property there, although he also mentions booklands in the south-east without specifying the locations. Eadwig cannot have been happy at his exclusion from the will, and it appears to have been set aside following his accession. ## Illness and death Eadred suffered from ill health at the end of his life which gradually got worse and led to his early death. Dunstan's first biographer, who probably attended court as a member of his household, wrote: Unfortunately Dunstan's beloved King Eadred was very sickly all through his reign. At mealtimes he would suck the juice out of his food, chew what was left of it for a little and then spit it out: a practice that often turned the stomachs of the thegns dining with him. He dragged on an invalid existence as best he could, despite the protests of his body (?), for quite a long time. Finally his worsening illness came over him more and more often with a thousandfold weight, and brought him unhappily to his deathbed. The eleventh-century hagiographer Herman the Archdeacon described Eadred as "debilis pedibus" (crippled in both feet), and in his later years he probably delegated authority to leading magnates such as Dunstan. Meetings of the witan were rarer when he was ill and business was limited, with no appointments of ealdormen. He did not marry, perhaps due to his poor health, and he died in his early thirties on 23 November 955, at Frome in Somerset. He was buried in the Old Minster, Winchester, although that was probably not his choice as in his will he made bequests to an unspecified location where "he wishes his body to rest", and then property to the Old Minster, implying that they were different places. Eadwig and Ælfsige, bishop of Winchester, may have decided on the burial place. The historian Nicole Marafioti suggests that Eadred may have wished to be buried at Glastonbury and Eadwig insisted on Winchester in order to prevent Eadred's supporters from using the grave as "ideological leverage" against the new regime. ## Assessment Domestic politics and recovering control over the whole of England were central to Eadred's rule and, unlike Æthelstan and Edmund, he is not known to have played any part in West Frankish politics, although in 949 ambassadors from Eadred attended the court of Otto I, King of East Francia at Aachen. Securing a general recognition of his authority was Eadred's primary duty, and his main preoccupation was dealing with northern rebellions. Northumbria fought for its independence against successive West Saxon kings, but the acceptance of Erik proved to be its last throw and it was finally conquered during Eadred's reign. Historians disagree on how great his role was. In the view of the historian Ben Snook, Eadred "relied on a kitchen cabinet to run the country on his behalf and seems never to have exercised much direct authority." Hart suggests that in Edmund's reign, Eadgifu and Æthelstan Half-King decided much of national policy, and the position did not change much under Eadred. By contrast, in Williams's view, Eadred was "clearly an able and even energetic king, hampered by debility and (at the last) by a serious illness which brought about his early death". Eadred's attitude towards his nephews is uncertain. Some charters are attested by both Eadwig and Edgar as cliton (medieval Latin for prince), but others by Eadwig as cliton or ætheling (Old English for prince) and Edgar as his brother. When he acceded, Eadwig dispossessed Eadgifu and exiled Dunstan, apparently as part of an attempt to free himself from the powerful advisers of his father and uncle. The attempt failed, as within two years he was forced to share the kingdom with Edgar, who became King of the Mercians, while Eadwig retained Wessex. Eadwig died in 959 after a rule of only four years.

Operation Sandwedge

1971 proposed American intelligence-gathering operation

Operation Sandwedge was a proposed clandestine intelligence-gathering operation against the political enemies of U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration. The proposals were put together by Nixon's Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, domestic affairs assistant John Ehrlichman and staffer Jack Caulfield in 1971. Caulfield, a former police officer, created a plan to target the Democratic Party and the anti-Vietnam War movement, inspired by what he believed to be the Democratic Party's employment of a private investigation firm. The operation was planned to help Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign. Operation Sandwedge included proposed surveillance of Nixon's enemies to gather information on their financial status and sexual activities, to be carried out through illegal black bag operations. The operation would have targeted not only the anti-Vietnam war movement and the political opposition, but rivals within Nixon's own Republican Party as well. Control of Sandwedge was passed to G. Gordon Liddy, who abandoned it in favor of a strategy of his own devising, Operation Gemstone, which detailed a plan to break into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex. Liddy's plan eventually led to the downfall of Nixon's presidency, which Caulfield believed would have been avoided had Sandwedge been acted upon. ## Background In 1968, Richard Nixon, the Republican Party nominee, won the presidential election, defeating Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the incumbent Vice President. Nixon's margin of victory in the popular vote was seven-tenths of a percent. Nixon had previously contested the 1960 election, narrowly losing to Democrat John F. Kennedy by a margin of less than 118,000 votes, which amounted to less than two-tenths of a percent of the total. The close margins involved in these elections—in particular, a swing of 28,000 votes in Texas or 4,500 in Illinois would have changed the outcomes in those states—have been cited by historian Theodore H. White as the impetus for future Nixon campaigns valuing every potential vote and not merely seeking a majority. White also makes the claim that electoral fraud was widespread within both main parties of the 1960 election. Nixon appointed H. R. Haldeman as his Chief of Staff; a position which granted Haldeman a relatively large degree of control over the activities of the presidential administration. Haldeman had first worked for Nixon in 1956, when Nixon was running as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice-presidential candidate in the 1952 election. By 1971, Nixon's staff were receiving a cursory intelligence report from Haldeman's assistant, Gordon C. Strachan; Strachan's reports essentially collated information about political rallies and campaign groups that had already been gathered by the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nixon's initial re-election bid had already involved planting rumors and false information about his opponents as a dedicated strategy; these tactics had been dubbed "political hardball" by Nixon's opposition researcher, Pat Buchanan. In August 1971, Strachan had convinced Jeb Stuart Magruder, a member of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP)—the campaign group for Nixon's re-election bid—to infiltrate the office of Edmund Muskie. Muskie was a Democratic senator who had been Humphrey's 1968 vice-presidential candidate, and was a front-runner for his party's presidential bid for the 1972 campaign. ## Inception In late 1971, John Dean, the White House Counsel, pushed to expand the existing intelligence program ahead of the 1972 re-election campaign. Dean delegated the task to Jack Caulfield, a member of his staff who was a former New York police officer. According to Dean, Caulfield himself was interested in work outside of politics; he intended to create a private security company, and felt that if the Nixon cabinet were an early client, it would lead to lucrative future clients within the private sector. Caulfield reportedly requested \$511,000 () from the campaign to establish field offices in Washington, New York, and Chicago. Fred Emery, a journalist for The Times and BBC, disputes this, claiming in his book Watergate: The Corruption & Fall of Richard Nixon that the idea of a private sector security firm was simply a front for a committed campaign of surveillance working for Nixon and the Republican Party, with political donations to the re-election campaign able to be diverted through the company as though they were unrelated transactions. John Ehrlichman, who was a long-time friend of Haldeman and had also served as White House Counsel, had been part of the operation's inception; by 1971 he was Nixon's domestic affairs assistant. Ehrlichman had initially hired Caulfield in 1969. Ehrlichman intended that Caulfield should conduct private investigations while undercover as a private sector employee; it was Caulfield who insisted on working from the White House. Caulfield's work to this end had already resulted in two wiretaps on phone lines—one on Nixon's brother Donald, and another on journalist Joseph Kraft. Caulfield prepared a twelve-page draft proposal detailing an intelligence-gathering strategy, aimed at the opposition Democratic Party; he worked on this draft for several months and presented it to Nixon's staff in September 1971. The proposal, dubbed "Operation Sandwedge", called for a budget of \$500,000 (), primarily to cover private investigative work and security for the Republican National Convention, although Caulfield intimated privately that it would also include electronic surveillance. ## Planned activities The operation's investigations and surveillance would, in part, assess how the anti-Vietnam War movement could damage Nixon's campaign. Nixon's staff also anticipated that the Democratic campaign would employ the services of Intertel, a private investigation firm led by former Department of Justice officials who had served under Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat and former Attorney General who had been the leading Democratic candidate in the 1968 primaries before his assassination. Caulfield noted that this firm had the potential to employ "formidable and sophisticated" intelligence-gathering techniques, and Sandwedge was his attempt to create a Republican counterpart. The plan would involve black bag operations, targeting political enemies of the campaign. Electronic surveillance was also an element of the proposal, with plans to scrutinize the private lives of the targets, including their tax records and sexual habits. The Sandwedge proposal also included a list of people willing to work with Caulfield on the project, among them several investigators and officials of the Internal Revenue Service and a former sheriff of Cook County, Illinois. Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's own attorney, transferred \$50,000 () to Caulfield at the request of John N. Mitchell. Mitchell had served as Attorney General during Nixon's first term, and directed the 1972 re-election campaign. Caulfield was also given responsibility for the salary of Tony Ulasewicz, an operative he planned to use for Sandwedge activities. Strachan, Dean and other staff members were frustrated at the pace of Caulfield's development of the project. Strachan directly questioned whether Caulfield was capable for the role in a memo dated from October 1971, while Haldeman, wishing for a project on a larger scale, pressed Mitchell for a budget of \$800,000 () for surveillance and "miscellaneous" activities. Caulfield recruited James W. McCord, Jr., a retired CIA officer, to protect the offices of the Republican National Convention and the CRP from electronic bugging. CRP directly employed McCord from January 1972. Caulfield also sent Ulasewicz to the campaign offices of Paul McCloskey in New Hampshire. McCloskey was a Republican congressman for California, who was running for the party's presidential nomination against Nixon on a platform opposing the Vietnam War. He was not regarded as a credible threat to Nixon's campaign, but had made statements calling for Nixon to be impeached. In December 1971, Ulasewicz masqueraded as a journalist to interview McCloskey's staff, Caulfield dubbing the effort a "Sandwedge-engineered penetration". ## Cancellation In October 1971, Haldeman, Mitchell, Magruder and Strachan met to discuss the Sandwedge project. As a result of this meeting, control of the operation was passed to G. Gordon Liddy, because Mitchell wanted a lawyer in charge of the campaign's intelligence-gathering. Another factor in Caulfield's removal from the helm was the belief of several White House officials—including Dean—that Caulfield's Irish-American, non-college-educated background was at odds with "an Administration of WASP professional men". Liddy built upon the proposals to devise "Operation Gemstone", a more expansive plan of espionage. Gemstone was an umbrella term for several discrete operations, each of which expanded upon elements of the Sandwedge draft or existing CRP activities. Operation Diamond covered breaking up protest demonstrations, Ruby involved undercover infiltration and honeypot traps, Crystal concerned electronic surveillance and wiretaps, and Sapphire proposed the sabotage of rival political campaigns. Campaign officials deemed Liddy's initial draft of Operation Gemstone "too extreme", but a scaled-down version was later approved in 1972. Despite Liddy's restructuring of the project, Dean requested additional funding for the original Sandwedge proposal in January 1972, although Mitchell's rejection of this request signaled the project's end. Liddy's revised Gemstone plan included a range of illegal activities, including a proposal to break into Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex. The Watergate burglaries were initially assumed to have been part of Operation Sandwedge, and the investigation into both the burglaries and the project led to Caulfield's resignation from his Nixon-appointed position as assistant director of criminal enforcement in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. ## Aftermath In the course of the Watergate scandal, 69 people were tried for various crimes. Of those tried, 48 pled guilty. Among those found guilty for covering up the affair were Haldeman, Ehrlichmann, Mitchell, Dean and Magruder; Liddy was found guilty for his role in the break-ins. All 48 men served time in prison as a result of their convictions. Faced with impeachment in the aftermath, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 8, 1974. He remains the only president to have resigned the office. Caulfield has suggested that Sandwedge's cancellation by the administration was an error in judgment, possibly "the most monumental of the Nixon Presidency". He believed that, had Sandwedge been adopted as the campaign's strategy, "there would have been no Liddy, no Hunt, no McCord", and the subsequent Watergate scandal would not have occurred. Speaking of the initial proposal, Dean defended its merits, stating that "Caulfield, not the plan itself, had killed Sandwedge". ## See also - Huston Plan - White House Plumbers

2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident

Accidental loading of warheads onto an aircraft

On 29 August 2007, six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before the missiles were taken from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions for nuclear weapons. The incident was reported to the top levels of the United States military and referred to by observers as a Bent Spear incident, which indicates a nuclear weapon incident below the more severe Broken Arrow tier. In response to the incident, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and USAF conducted an investigation, the results of which were released on 19 October 2007. The investigation concluded that nuclear weapons handling standards and procedures had not been followed by numerous USAF personnel involved in the incident. As a result, four USAF commanders were relieved of their commands, numerous other USAF personnel were disciplined or decertified to perform certain types of sensitive duties, and further cruise missile transport missions from—and nuclear weapons operations at—Minot Air Force Base were suspended. In addition, the USAF issued new nuclear weapons handling instructions and procedures. Separate investigations by the Defense Science Board and a USAF "blue ribbon" panel reported that concerns existed on the procedures and processes for handling nuclear weapons within the Department of Defense but did not find any failures with the security of United States nuclear weapons. Based on this and other incidents, on 5 June 2008, Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff of the Air Force General T. Michael Moseley were asked for their resignations, which they gave. In October 2008, in response to recommendations by a review committee, the USAF announced the creation of Air Force Global Strike Command to control all USAF nuclear bombers, missiles, and personnel. ## Background At the time of the incident, the 5th Bomb Wing was commanded by Colonel Bruce Emig, the 2nd Bomb Wing by Colonel Robert Wheeler, the 8th Air Force by Lieutenant General Robert J. Elder Jr., and Air Combat Command (ACC) by General Ronald Keys. The 5th Bomb Wing, according to the USAF's statement on the wing's mission, served with its B-52H bombers as part of the USAF's conventional and strategic combat force. The "strategic" portion of the 5th's mission included the ability to deliver nuclear weapons against potential targets worldwide. Thus, Minot Air Force Base stored and maintained a ready arsenal of nuclear bombs, nuclear warheads, and associated delivery systems, including the AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile. The AGM-129 ACM was fielded in 1987 as a stealthy cruise missile platform to deliver the W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead. Although originally designed to equip the B-1B Lancer bomber, the AGM-129 was redesignated so that it would only be carried by the B-52H, mounted on external pylons on the wings or internally in the bomb bay. In March 2007, the USAF decided to retire its AGM-129 complement to help comply with international arms-control treaties and to replace them with AGM-86 ALCM missiles. To do so, the USAF began to transport its AGM-129s stored at Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana by B-52s for ultimate disposal. According to The Washington Post, by 29 August 2007, more than 200 AGM-129s had been shipped from Minot to Barksdale in this manner. ## Incident Between 08:00 and 09:00 (local time) on 29 August 2007, a group of USAF airmen, called the breakout crew, entered one of the weapons storage bunkers at Minot to prepare AGM-129 missiles for transport to Barksdale. That day's missile transport, the sixth of twelve planned ferry missions, was to have consisted of twelve AGM-129s, installed with training warheads, with six missiles per pylon and one pylon mounted under each wing of a Barksdale-assigned, 2nd Bomb Wing B-52 aircraft. When the airmen entered the bunker, six live warheads were still installed on their missiles, as opposed to having been replaced with the dummy training warheads. A later investigation found that the reason for the error was that the electronic production system for tracking the missiles "had been subverted in favor of an informal process that did not identify the pylon as prepared for the flight." The airmen assigned to handle the missiles used outdated materials that contained incorrect information on the status of the missiles. The missiles originally planned for movement had been replaced by missiles closer to expiration dates for limited-life components, which was standard procedure. The change in missiles had been reflected on the movement plan but not in the documents used for internal work coordination processes in the bunker. Although the breakout crew in the weapons storage began to inspect the missiles, an early-arriving transport crew hooked up the pylons and towed them away without inspecting or ensuring that the missiles had been inspected or cleared for removal. The munitions control center failed to verify that the pylon had received proper clearance and inspection and approved the pylon for loading on the B-52 at 09:25. After the eight hours it took to attach the pylons, the aircraft with the missiles loaded then remained parked overnight at Minot for 15 hours without the special guard required for nuclear weapons. On the morning of 30 August one of the transport aircraft's flight officers, a Barksdale-assigned B-52 instructor radar navigator, closely inspected the six missiles on the right wing only, which were all properly loaded with training warheads. The B-52 command pilot did not do a final verification check before signing the manifest listing the cargo as a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles to depart Minot. The B-52 departed Minot at 08:40 and landed at Barksdale at 11:23 (local times) on 30 August. The aircraft remained parked and without a special guard until 20:30, when a munitions team arrived to remove the missiles. After a member of the munitions crew noticed something unusual about some of the missiles, a "skeptical" supervisor determined that nuclear warheads were present and ordered them secured and the incident was reported, 36 hours after the missiles were removed from the bunker at Minot. The incident was reported to the National Military Command Center as a Bent Spear incident. General T. Michael Moseley, Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, quickly called United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, on 31 August to inform him about the incident. Gates requested daily updates regarding the investigation and informed President Bush about the incident. The USAF has yet to officially designate what type of incident occurred, Bent Spear or otherwise. The incident was the first of its kind in forty years in the United States and was later described by the media as "one of the worst breaches in U.S. nuclear weapons security in decades". ## Response by the U.S. government The USAF and Department of Defense at first decided to conceal the incident, in part because of the USAF policy not to comment on the storage or movement of nuclear weapons and an apparent belief that the incident would not generate much public concern. In fact, the initial DoD incident report contained the statement, "No press interest anticipated." Details of the incident were then leaked by unknown DoD officials to the Military Times newspaper, which published a small article about the incident on 5 September 2007. In response, a 5 September news briefing at the Pentagon by Press Secretary Geoff Morrell stated that at no time was the public in any danger and that military personnel had custody of the weapons at all times. The USAF announced that within days of the incident, the USAF relieved the Minot munitions squadron commander of duty and eventually disciplined 25 airmen. USAF Major General Doug Raaberg was assigned by General Keys to lead an investigation into the incident. The USAF inventory of nuclear warheads was checked to ensure that all warheads were accounted for. In addition, the DoD announced that a Pentagon-appointed scientific advisory panel, called the Defense Science Board, would study the mishap as part of a larger review of procedures for handling nuclear weapons. On 28 September, the USAF announced that General Keys was retiring and would be replaced as ACC commander by General John Corley, effective 2 October. On 19 October 2007, United States Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and USAF Major General Richard Newton, deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and requirements, announced the investigation report findings, stating that "there has been an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards at Minot Air Force Base and at Barksdale Air Force Base" and that "a limited number of airmen at both locations failed to follow procedures." Colonel Emig, the commander of the 5th Bomb Wing, Colonel Cynthia Lundell, the commander of the 5th Maintenance Group at Minot, and Colonel Todd Westhauser, the commander of Barksdale's 2d Operations Group, and four senior non-commissioned officers from the 5th Munitions Squadron "received administrative action" and were relieved of their commands or positions and reassigned. All of the 5th Bomb Wing personnel were stripped of their certifications to handle nuclear and other sensitive weaponry and to conduct "specific missions". Sixty-five airmen of varying ranks lost their Personnel Reliability Program certifications. Tactical ferry operations were suspended. The inspector general offices of all USAF Major Commands that handle nuclear weapons were directed to conduct immediate "Limited Nuclear Surety Inspections (LNSIs) at every nuclear-capable unit" with oversight provided by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The new ACC commander, General Corley, referred the matter to USAF Lieutenant General Norman Seip, commander of the 12th Air Force, as a court-martial convening authority to determine if additional charges or actions would be taken against any of the personnel involved in the incident. Seip later closed the investigation without recommending criminal charges against anyone involved. Retired USAF Chief of Staff General Larry Welch was asked by Gates, who had reportedly raised concerns with USAF officials that the original investigation may have unfairly limited blame to midlevel officers, to lead the Defense Science Board advisory panel that would study the mishap as part of a larger review of procedures and policies for handling nuclear weapons. In addition, the USAF chartered a "blue ribbon" review chaired by USAF Major General Polly Peyer and consisting of 30 additional personnel to "make recommendations as to how we can improve the Air Force's capability to safely and securely perform our nuclear weapons responsibility". Furthermore, the United States Congress requested that the DoD and the United States Department of Energy conduct a bottom-up review of nuclear procedures. ## Aftermath ### USAF actions On 24 October 2007, Secretary of the Air Force Wynne told the House Armed Services Committee that he believed that the 5th Bomb Wing could be recertified and could resume ferrying the AGM-129 cruise missiles to Barksdale for retirement. He did not provide a timeline for that recertification process. On 1 November 2007 Colonel Joel Westa took command of the 5th Bomb Wing. That same day, General Keys retired from the Air Force. Personnel from Barksdale's 2nd Bomb Wing temporarily took over maintenance duties of Minot's nuclear stockpile until the 5th Bomb Wing could be recertified. A nuclear surety inspection (NSI), required for recertification, originally scheduled for the 5th Bomb Wing for 23 January 2008 was postponed after the wing failed an initial NSI that took place on 16 December 2007. Another initial NSI was completed on 29 March and Corley recertified the wing on 31 March 2008. A full NSI was scheduled for May 2008. The wing needed to regain its certification in order to hold the full NSI. Units handling nuclear weapons must pass NSIs every 18 months in order to retain their certifications. The USAF issued a new policy directive regarding the handling of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, which prohibits the storing of nuclear armed and nonnuclear armed weapons in the same storage facility. The directive further instructs that all nonnuclear munitions and missiles must be labeled with placards clearly stating that they are not armed with nuclear warheads. Wing commanders are now charged with approving any movement of nuclear weapons from weapons storage areas and must appoint a single individual as a munitions accountability system officer and weapons custodian. All units that handle nuclear weapons must develop a coordinated visual inspection checklist. The policy further directs that airmen charged with handling or maintaining nuclear weapons cannot be on duty for longer than 12 hours, unless during an emergency, when their duty period can be extended to a maximum of 16 hours. The USAF has since instituted a program of surprise inspections at nuclear-armed bases. ### Review reports Welch and Peyer briefed the results of their reviews before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services on 12 February 2008. In addition to Welch and Peyer, Lieutenant General Daniel Darnell, USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Air, Space and Information Operations, and Major General Raaberg testified and answered questions from the Senate committee's members. During the hearing, Welch stated that "the military units responsible for handling the bombs are not properly inspected and, as a result, may not be ready to perform their missions." He added, "If you look at all the areas and all the ways that we have to store and handle these weapons in order to perform the mission, it just requires, we believe, more resources and more attention than they're getting." Welch's report concluded that the combining of DoD nuclear forces with nonnuclear organizations has led to "markedly reduced levels of leadership whose daily focus is the nuclear enterprise and a general devaluation of the nuclear mission and those who perform the mission." Nevertheless, neither Welch's nor Peyer's reports found any failures with the security of United States nuclear weapons. Responding to Welch's and Peyer's reports, USAF officials stated that they were already implementing many of the recommendations contained in the reports but added that existing regulations governing nuclear procedures were satisfactory. During his testimony before the senate committee, Darnell stated that "the Air Force portion of the nuclear deterrent is sound, and we will take every measure necessary to provide safe, secure, reliable nuclear surety to the American public." ### Inspections, resignations, and further discipline Minot's full NSI took place beginning on 17 May 2008, and was conducted by inspectors from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the USAF's Air Combat Command (ACC). On 25 May, the DTRA issued the 5th Bomb Wing an "unsatisfactory" rating, the lowest rating possible, from the inspection. The 5th passed the inspection in nine of ten areas, but failed in the area of nuclear security. Following the inspection, Westa stated, "Overall, their assessment painted a picture of some things we need to work on in the areas of training and discipline". The 5th Bomb Wing Security Forces Squadron Commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Worley, was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Weaver on 16 June 2008. In spite of failing the NSI, the wing kept its nuclear certification. Minot passed the follow-up inspection on 15 August 2008. On 5 June 2008, Robert Gates announced the results of an investigation into the incorrect shipment in 2006 of four Mk 12 forward-section reentry vehicle assemblies to Taiwan. The investigation, conducted by Admiral Kirkland H. Donald, director of U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion, found that the Taiwan missile incident was, in Gates' words, "a degradation of the authority, standards of excellence and technical competence within the nation's ICBM force. Similar to the bomber-specific August 2007 Minot-Barksdale nuclear weapons transfer incident, this incident took place within the larger environment of declining Air Force nuclear mission focus and performance" and that "the investigation identified commonalities between the August 2007 Minot incident and this [the Taiwan] event." In his investigation report, Donald stated that the issues identified by his investigation were "indicative of an overall decline in Air Force nuclear weapons stewardship, a problem that has been identified but not effectively addressed for over a decade. Both the Minot-Barksdale nuclear weapons transfer incident and the Taiwan misshipment, while different in specifics, have a common origin: the gradual erosion of nuclear standards and a lack of effective oversight by Air Force leadership." As a result of the investigation, Gates announced that "a substantial number of Air Force general officers and colonels have been identified as potentially subject to disciplinary measures, ranging from removal from command to letters of reprimand," and that he had accepted the resignations of Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne and USAF Chief of Staff T. Michael Moseley. Gates added that he had asked James R. Schlesinger to lead a senior-level task force to recommend improvements in the stewardship and operation of nuclear weapons, delivery vehicles and sensitive components by the Department of Defense. Members of the task force came from the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Science Board. On 13 September 2008, Gates announced Schlesinger's task force's recommendations by calling on the USAF to place all nuclear weapons under a single command. The task force suggested that the new command be called Air Force Strategic Command, which would replace the current Air Force Space Command, and make it accountable for the nuclear mission. It also called for all USAF bombers to be placed under a single command. In addition, the task force recommended that the USAF move an additional 1,500 to 2,000 airmen into nuclear-related jobs. Gates announced that acting Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley and Chief of Staff General Norton A. Schwartz were "reviewing the recommendations" for disciplinary action against USAF officers previously involved in the nuclear mission. The task force found an "unambiguous, dramatic and unacceptable decline in the Air Force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission and, until very recently, little has been done to reverse it." On 25 September 2008, the United States Department of Defense announced that six Air Force generals, two Army generals, and nine colonels had received letters of reprimand, admonishment, or counseling. Two Air Force major generals were asked to stay in their current position and the others either retired, planned to retire, or were removed from their position. Air Force Chief of Staff Norton Schwartz met with each officer personally before issuing the letters. He noted that they had committed no offense under the UCMJ, but "did not do enough to carry out their leadership responsibilities for nuclear oversight" and "for that they must be held accountable." The Air Force stated that the discipline was in response to the mistaken shipment of nuclear fuzes to Taiwan, not for the Minot nuclear weapons incident. The Air Force generals who were disciplined were: - Lt. Gen. Kevin J. Sullivan, Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Installations and Mission Support at the Pentagon. Sullivan was demoted and retired at the rank of major general in November 2008. - Lt. Gen. Michael A. Hamel, who was commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center. He received a letter of admonishment and was allowed to retire in November 2008. - Maj. Gen. Roger W. Burg, commander of 20th Air Force, who received a letter of admonishment. He was allowed to remain in his position to correct problems. - Maj. Gen. Kathleen D. Close, commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center. She received a letter of admonishment and was allowed to stay on. - Brig. Gen. Francis M. Bruno, director of logistics for Air Force Materiel Command. He received a letter of admonishment and was allowed to retire. - Brig. Gen. Arthur B. Cameron III, was commander of the 309th Maintenance Wing. He received a letter of admonishment and was reassigned. The Army generals were: - Brig. Gen. Lynn A. Collyar, who commanded the Defense Distribution Center from August 2006 to June 2008. He was allowed to stay in his position. - Brig. Gen. Michael J. Lally III, who commanded the center from August 2004 to August 2006. In addition, five colonels received letters of reprimand, including two who were removed from commands. Three other colonels received letters of admonishment, and one colonel received a letter of counseling. In November 2008, the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base failed its nuclear surety inspection. The 90th Missile Wing at F. E. Warren Air Force Base failed its nuclear surety inspection one month later. In November 2009 at Kirtland Air Force Base the 377th Air Base Wing, commanded by Colonel Michael S. Duvall, and 498th Nuclear Systems Wing, commanded by Colonel Richard M. Stuckey, failed their nuclear surety inspections. On 30 October 2009, Westa was relieved as commander of the 5th Bomb Wing by Major General Floyd L. Carpenter, commander of 8th Air Force under "perfection is the standard" philosophy. Carpenter stated that Westa was relieved for his "inability to foster a culture of excellence, a lack of focus on the strategic mission, and substandard performance during several nuclear surety inspections, including the newly activated 69th Bomb Squadron." On 8 January 2009, Schlesinger's task force released its report regarding the overall DoD's management of the country's nuclear weapons mission. The report criticized the DoD for a lack of focus and oversight on its nuclear weapons programs and recommended that the DoD create a new assistant secretary position to oversee its nuclear management. The task force found that within the DoD only the United States Navy was effectively managing its nuclear arsenal. The panel stated that it found "a distressing degree of inattention to the role of nuclear weapons in deterrence among many senior DoD military and civilian leaders." ### New command On 24 October 2008, new USAF Secretary Michael Donley announced the creation of Air Force Global Strike Command, which became operational on 7 August 2009. The USAF's intercontinental nuclear missile force was moved from Air Force Space Command to the new command. Barksdale Air Force Base was selected as the location of the new command's headquarters. The new major command is led by General Robin Rand and controls all USAF nuclear-capable bombers, missiles, and personnel. ## See also - Permissive Action Link

Interstate 80 Business (West Wendover, Nevada–Wendover, Utah)

Interstate Highway business loop in Nevada and Utah in the United States

Interstate 80 Business (I-80 Bus) is an unofficial business loop of Interstate 80 (I-80) that is 2.26 miles (3.64 km) long and serves as the main street for the US cities of West Wendover, Nevada, and Wendover, Utah, along a roadway named Wendover Boulevard. Wendover Boulevard was originally part of US Route 40 (US 40), which connected California to New Jersey via Nevada and Utah. A portion of the Nevada segment is concurrent with US 93 Alternate (US 93 Alt), and the entire portion in Utah is coterminous with Utah State Route 58 (SR-58). The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) applied for the business loop designation in the early 1980s, but the designation has never been approved; nevertheless, signs are posted in both states. Between July 1976 and 1993, I-80 Bus was concurrent with Nevada State Route 224 (SR 224) in Nevada. ## Route description Starting at the easternmost Nevada exit of I-80, I-80 Bus heads south along Florence Way, concurrent with US 93 Alt until it intersects with, and turns east onto Wendover Boulevard. Just west of the intersection, the highway passes the West Wendover City Hall, which houses the West Wendover Municipal Court and Eastline Justice Court. Traveling east along Wendover Boulevard, I-80 Bus passes by the Peppermill Wendover casino, the West Wendover Visitors Center, and Scobie Park. US 93 Alt turns south toward Ely, while I-80 Bus continues east until it reaches the Montego Bay Resort and Wendover Nugget casinos. The casinos are connected via a skybridge that allows pedestrian access between the hotels without crossing the highway. A line painted on the street marks the Nevada–Utah border. At the border, I-80 Bus becomes coterminous with SR-58 for the final stretch through Wendover, Utah. I-80 Bus continues to the east past Aria Boulevard, which to the north connects to I-80 and to the south leads to the historic Wendover Air Force Base, where the 509th Composite Group was stationed while it prepared to conduct atomic bomb attacks against Japan during 1944 and 1945. The highway briefly parallels the Shafter Subdivision of the Union Pacific Railroad's Central Corridor, which was formerly part of the Feather River Route of the Western Pacific Railroad. As the highway travels east toward a half trumpet interchange with I-80, the number of lanes drops from five to two. Traffic from I-80 Bus can access eastbound I-80 or turn off onto Frontage Road; however, to access westbound I-80, travelers must continue eastbound until the next exit and turn around. Traffic into Wendover can access I-80 Bus from both directions of I-80, and from Frontage Road. The Utah segment of I-80 Bus is codified into Utah law as Utah Code §72-4-111. Every year, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) conducts a series of surveys on its highways to measure traffic volume. This is expressed in terms of annual average daily traffic (AADT), which is a measure of average traffic volume for any day of the year. In 2009, UDOT calculated that an average of 2,370 vehicles per day traveled on I-80 Bus at the state line. This is a significant decrease from the traffic counts earlier in the decade, which measured 11,205 vehicles in 2006, 10,345 in 2005, and 13,840 in 2004. Of this traffic, 21 percent consists of trucks. ## History A roadway, now named Wendover Boulevard, has existed since June 23, 1925, when the Victory Highway was completed through Wendover. Then governors George Dern of Utah and James G. Scrugham of Nevada, as well as the Secretary of Agriculture William Marion Jardine were present to open the highway. Bill Smith and Herman Eckstein opened a filling station at the present location of Wendover Nugget at a cost of \$500 early in 1926 (equivalent to \$ in ). To welcome travelers to his station, he installed a light bulb at the top of a tall pole, which served as the only light in the desert. The earlier Lincoln Highway was rerouted to follow the Victory Highway through the region by an order of the Lincoln Highway Association executive committee on October 18, 1926. Wendover Boulevard was numbered US 40 through what are now the cities of West Wendover and Wendover beginning in 1926. US 40 was the major thoroughfare between San Francisco, in the west, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the east. US 40 was routed along the Wendover Cut-off, now known as Frontage Road, which was retained as a service road after the completion of the I-80. The US 40 designation was removed by 1976 or 1977, when I-80 was completed through the area. The designation of roadway now numbered US 93 Alt has changed twice in the past. Between 1932 and 1953, it was designated US 50, and, between 1954 and either 1978 or 1979, it was designated US 50 Alt. Two other roads have been numbered SR-58 in the past. The first route designated SR-58 was formed in 1945 between SR-36 and Clover, but was decommissioned in 1953. The second road to use the designation was formed in 1965 between I-15 in New Harmony back to I-15 via Kanarraville, but that road was decommissioned in 1969. The current SR-58 was codified into Utah law in 1969 between the state line and the junction with Frontage Road, which was formerly US 40. Wendover Boulevard between US 93 Alt and the state line was designated SR 224 between July 1, 1976, and April 28, 1993, when the highway was transferred to Elko County. Even though I-80 Bus is signed in both Nevada and Utah, the route has never been officially designated a business loop by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) or by the Utah State Legislature. NDOT applied for the designation, but, in July 1982, the application was deferred by AASHTO until Utah submitted a request for a business loop. No such request has ever been submitted. Prior to 2007, I-80 Bus was the only connection to the city of Wendover from Utah. However, a new partial diamond interchange, which allows traffic from I-80 to exit going westbound and for traffic to enter I-80 eastbound, at Aria Boulevard was constructed. The Aria Boulevard interchange was first planned in 2005 and was completed without using any federal funding. In 2007, the city of West Wendover had two historical markers installed along I-80 Bus, one at the state line and the other at the intersection of US 93 Alt to commemorate the Victory Highway and US 40. ## Major intersections ## See also - Interstate 80 Business (Nevada) for other business routes of I-80 in Nevada

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate

2007 non-fiction book

Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment is a 2007 non-fiction book by journalist Anthony Lewis about freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation which limits free speech or freedom of the press. Lewis traces the evolution of civil liberties in the U.S. through key historical events. He provides an overview of important free speech case law, including U.S. Supreme Court opinions in Schenck v. United States (1919), Whitney v. California (1927), United States v. Schwimmer (1929), New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), and New York Times Co. v. United States (1971). The title of the book is drawn from the dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in United States v. Schwimmer. Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." Lewis warns the reader against the potential for government to take advantage of periods of fear and upheaval in a post-9/11 society to suppress freedom of speech and criticism by citizens. The book was positively received by reviewers, including Jeffrey Rosen in The New York Times, Richard H. Fallon Jr. in Harvard Magazine, Nat Hentoff, two National Book Critics Circle members, and Kirkus Reviews. Jeremy Waldron commented on the work for The New York Review of Books and criticized Lewis' stance towards freedom of speech with respect to hate speech. Waldron elaborated on this criticism in his book The Harm in Hate Speech (2012), in which he devoted a chapter to Lewis' book. This prompted a critical analysis of both works in The New York Review of Books in June 2012 by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. ## Contents Freedom for the Thought That We Hate analyzes the value of freedom of speech and presents an overview of the historical development of rights afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its title derives from Justice Holmes' admonition, in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), that the First Amendment's guarantees are most worthy of protection in times of fear and upheaval, when calls for suppression of dissent are most strident and superficially appealing. Holmes wrote that "if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." The book starts by quoting the First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. Congress from creating legislation that limits free speech or freedom of the press. The author analyzes the impact of this clause and refers to the writer of the United States Constitution, James Madison, who believed that freedom of the press would serve as a form of separation of powers to the government. Lewis writes that an expansive respect for freedom of speech informs the reader as to why citizens should object to governmental attempts to block the media from reporting about the causes of a controversial war. Lewis warns that, in a state in which controversial views are not allowed to be spoken, citizens and reporters merely serve as advocates for the state itself. He recounts key historic events in which fear led to overreaching acts by the government, particularly from the executive branch. The author gives background on the century-long process by which the U.S. judicial system began defending publishers and writers from attempts at suppression of speech by the government. In 1798, the federal government, under President John Adams, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which deemed "any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States" a criminal act. The Alien and Sedition Acts were used for political impact against members of the Republican Party in order to punish them for criticizing the government. Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, was elected the next president in 1800; Lewis cites this as an example of the American public's dissatisfaction with Adams' actions against freedom of speech. After taking office in 1801, Jefferson issued pardons to those convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. Lewis interprets later historical events as affronts to freedom of speech, including the Sedition Act of 1918, which effectively outlawed criticism of the government's conduct of WW I; and the McCarran Internal Security Act and Smith Act, which were used to imprison American communists who were critical of the government during the McCarthy era. During World War I, with increased fear among the American public and attempts at suppression of criticism by the government, the First Amendment was given wider examination in the U.S. Supreme Court. Lewis writes that Associate Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., began to interpret broader support for freedom of speech imparted by the First Amendment. Holmes wrote in the case of Schenck v. United States that freedom of speech must be defended except for situations in which "substantive evils" are caused through a "clear and present danger" arising from such speech. The author reflects on his view of speech in the face of imminent danger in an age of terrorism. He writes that the U.S. Constitution permits suppression of speech in situations of impending violence, and cautions use of the law to suppress expressive acts including burning a flag or using offensive slang terms. Lewis asserts that punitive measures can be taken against speech which incites terrorism to a group of people willing to commit such acts. The book recounts an opinion written by Brandeis and joined by Holmes in the 1927 case of Whitney v. California which further developed the notion of the power of the people to speak out. Brandeis and Holmes emphasized the value of liberty, and identified the most dangerous factor to freedom as an apathetic society averse to voicing their opinions in public. In the 1964 Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the court ruled that speech about issues of public impact should be unrestricted, vigorous and public, even if such discussion communicates extreme negative criticism of public servants and members of government. Lewis praises this decision, and writes that it laid the groundwork for a press more able to perform investigative journalism concerning controversies, including the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. He cites the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision as an example of "Madisonian" philosophy towards freedom of speech espoused by James Madison. The author examines the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. United States, and endorses the court's decision, which allowed the press to publish classified material relating to the Vietnam War. The author questions the actions of the media with respect to privacy. He observes that public expectations regarding morality and what constitutes an impermissible violation of the right to privacy has changed over time. Lewis cites the dissenting opinion by Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, which supported a right to privacy. Lewis warns that, during periods of heightened anxiety, the free speech rights of Americans are at greater risk: "there will always be authorities who try to make their own lives more comfortable by suppressing critical comment." He concludes that the evolution of interpretation of the rights afforded by the First Amendment has created stronger support for freedom of speech. ## Themes The book's central theme is a warning that, in times of strife and increased fear, there is a danger of repression and suppression of dissent by those in government who seek to limit freedom of speech. In an interview with the author, Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine wrote that American politics has frequently used fear to justify repression. Lewis pointed out to Solomon that, under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, individuals who protested against President Woodrow Wilson's sending of soldiers to Russia were tried and given a twenty-year jail sentence. The author explained that his motivation for writing the book was to recognize the unparalleled civil liberties in the U.S., including freedom of speech and freedom of the press. He identified reductions in freedoms of citizens as a result of governmental action taken after the September 11 attacks. Freedom for the Thought That We Hate discusses the capability and liberty of citizens to criticize their government. Lewis asserts that the U.S. has the most unreserved speech of any nation. Law professor Jeremy Waldron gave the example of his ability to criticize the president or call the vice president and Secretary of Defense war criminals, without fear of retribution from law enforcement for such statements. The book contrasts present-day free speech liberties afforded to Americans and those possessed by citizens in earlier centuries. The author argues that the scope of civil liberties in the U.S. has increased over time, owing to a desire for freedom among its people being held as an integral value. Lewis observes that, in contemporary application of the law, presidents are the subject of satire and denunciation. He notes that it is unlikely a vociferous critic would face a jail sentence simply for voicing such criticism. ## Release and reception Freedom for the Thought That We Hate was first published in 2007 by Basic Books in New York, with the subtitle, A Biography of the First Amendment. For the second printing, in both New York and London in 2008, the book's subtitle was simplified to Tales of the First Amendment. That change was reverted for the remaining printings, including the paperback edition in 2009 and a large print edition in 2010. E-book versions were released for the first, third and fourth printings; an audiobook was released with the second printing, and re-released with the fourth. The book has also been translated into Chinese, and was published in Beijing in 2010. The book was positively received by critics. Jeffrey Rosen, who reviewed the book for The New York Times, was surprised by the author's departure from traditional civil libertarian views. Rosen pointed out that Lewis did not support absolute protection for journalists from breaking confidentiality with their anonymous sources, even in situations involving criminal acts. Nat Hentoff called the book an engrossing and accessible survey of the First Amendment. Kirkus Reviews considered the book an excellent chronological account of the First Amendment, subsequent legislation, and case law. Richard H. Fallon Jr. reviewed the book for Harvard Magazine, and characterized Freedom for the Thought That We Hate as a clear and captivating background education in U.S. freedom of speech legislation. Fallon praised the author's ability to weave descriptions of historical events into an entertaining account. Robyn Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times wrote that Lewis aptly summarized the development of the U.S. Constitution's protections of freedom of speech and of the press. She observed that the book forcefully presented the author's admiration of brave judges who had helped to develop the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's protections of the rights of freedom of expression as a defense against censorship. Writing for the Hartford Courant, Bill Williams stated that the book should be mandatory reading for high school and college students. Anne Phillips wrote in her review for The News-Gazette that the book is a concise and well-written description of the conflicts the country faces when grappling with the notions of freedom of expression, free speech, and freedom of the press. Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Chuck Leddy noted that the author helps readers understand the importance of freedom of speech in a democracy, especially during a period of military conflict, when there is increased controversy over the appropriateness of dissent and open dialogue. Jeremy Waldron reviewed the book for The New York Review of Books, and was critical of Lewis's broad stance towards freedom of speech with respect to hate speech. Waldron later elaborated this position in his 2012 book The Harm in Hate Speech, in which he devoted an entire chapter to Lewis's book. Waldron emphasized that the problem with an expansive view of free speech is not the harm of hateful thoughts, but rather the negative impact resulting from widespread publication of the thoughts. He questioned whether children of racial groups criticized by widely published hate speech would be able to succeed in such an environment. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens analyzed The Harm in Hate Speech and discussed Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, in a review for The New York Review of Books. Justice Stevens recounted Lewis's argument that an acceptance of hate speech is necessary, because attempts to regulate it would cause encroachment upon expression of controversial viewpoints. He pointed out that Lewis and Waldron agreed that Americans have more freedom of speech than citizens of any other country. In his review, Stevens cited the 2011 decision in Snyder v. Phelps as evidence that the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court supported the right of the people to express hateful views on matters of public importance. Stevens concluded that, although Waldron was unsuccessful in convincing him that legislators should ban all hate speech, The Harm in Hate Speech persuaded him that government leaders should refrain from using such language themselves. ## See also - Censorship in the United States - Civil liberties in the United States - Free speech fights - Freedom of speech in the United States - Freedom of the press in the United States

John Raymond science fiction magazines

American magazines published 1952 to 1954

Between 1952 and 1954, John Raymond published four digest-size science fiction and fantasy magazines. Raymond was an American publisher of men's magazines who knew little about science fiction, but the field's rapid growth and a distributor's recommendation prompted him to pursue the genre. Raymond consulted and then hired Lester del Rey to edit the first magazine, Space Science Fiction, which appeared in May 1952. Following a second distributor's suggestion that year, Raymond launched Science Fiction Adventures, which del Rey again edited, but under an alias. In 1953, Raymond gave del Rey two more magazines to edit: Rocket Stories, which targeted a younger audience, and Fantasy Magazine, which published fantasy rather than science fiction. All four magazines were profitable, but Raymond did not reinvest the profits in improving the magazines and was late in paying contributors. Del Rey persuaded Raymond to invest some of the profits back into the magazines, but nothing came of this and, when del Rey discovered that Raymond was planning to cut rates instead, he resigned. Two of the magazines continued for a short time with Harry Harrison as editor, but by the end of 1954 all four magazines had ceased publication. The magazines are well regarded by science fiction historians. They carried fiction by many names well known in the field or who later became famous, including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert E. Howard, and John Jakes. ## Publication history American science fiction magazines first appeared in the 1920s with the launch of Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine published by Hugo Gernsback. World War II and its attendant paper shortages interrupted the expanding market for the genre, but by the late 1940s the market began to recover again. In October 1950, the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction appeared; it reached a circulation of 100,000 within a year, and its success encouraged other publishers to enter the field. John Raymond, at that time primarily a publisher of men's magazines, was told by his distributor that science fiction was a growing field; Raymond knew nothing about science fiction so he asked Lester del Rey for advice, and then offered del Rey the job of editor on the new magazine. Del Rey was initially hesitant, but eventually agreed to become the editor of Space Science Fiction; the first issue was dated May 1952. When another distributor approached Raymond to ask if he would be interested in publishing a science fiction title, he suggested to del Rey that this second magazine should focus on action stories. The result was Science Fiction Adventures, which appeared in November that year. Raymond decided to expand further, launching Fantasy Magazine in March 1953, and Rocket Stories, which like Science Fiction Adventures was aimed at a juvenile readership, the following month. Ziff-Davis had launched Fantastic, a rival fantasy magazine, in 1952, and once Fantasy Magazine appeared, they threatened to sue Raymond because of the similarity of the titles, so Raymond renamed the magazine Fantasy Fiction from the second issue onwards. Del Rey used several pseudonyms for these magazines: he edited the last issue of Fantasy Magazine as "Cameron Hall", and edited Rocket Stories as "Wade Kaempfert"; for Science Fiction Adventures he edited as "Philip St. John" and used another alias, "R. Alvarez", as the publisher's name. Del Rey hired Michael Shaara, later a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, as associate editor. Raymond's management of the magazines was chaotic, according to del Rey. There was no fixed schedule; one day Raymond told del Rey that the magazines would be switching to a monthly schedule, but nothing came of this. Raymond would simply decide that copy was due the very next day for one of them, which meant that del Rey had to scramble to find material ready to use—since Raymond paid on publication, del Rey did not acquire an inventory of stories ahead of time to use when needed. This made it harder for him to keep to the plan of targeting each magazine to a particular readership. Del Rey sometimes had to write a story overnight to have a lead story for an issue: "it was a miserable way to run a magazine", he recalled. Raymond did give del Rey complete control of story purchasing; as a favor to del Rey, John Campbell, the influential editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, called Raymond and convinced him that it was necessary to let the editor make the fiction decisions. All four magazines made money. The break-even circulation for each magazine was 45,000; Fantasy Magazine was selling about 70,000 an issue, and Science Fiction Adventures did nearly as well. Both Space Science Fiction and Rocket Stories had distribution problems, which harmed circulation, but they were still profitable. The money was not reinvested in the magazines, and del Rey proposed to Raymond that they increase the per-word rate paid to authors, pay earlier instead of on publication, and increase del Rey's own remuneration. Del Rey calculated the increased circulation that would be needed for these investments to show a net profit, and threatened to resign unless Raymond approved the changes. Raymond agreed, but did nothing to put the new plan into effect, and when del Rey went to the offices to complain because he had heard that some authors had not been paid, he was told by the art director that Raymond, who was not there, had decided to cut payment rates to one cent per word, only include art by the art director, and cut the page count on all the magazines to 144 pages. Del Rey resigned, and later recalled that "Raymond informed everyone that I'd been fired, and his lawyer threatened to sue me for slander and libel because I'd returned the manuscripts to authors, stating that the new rate was in effect. My reply convinced the lawyer to lay off." Raymond hired Harry Harrison to replace del Rey for three of the magazines; Harrison would not take on Fantasy Magazine as he felt he knew too little about the fantasy genre. Raymond hired Fletcher Pratt for Fantasy Magazine instead; Pratt assembled a fifth issue, but would not pass the manuscripts to Raymond until the authors were paid. Raymond did not pay, and the fifth issue never saw print. The other titles did not last much longer; Space Science Fiction never saw an issue with Harrison's name as editor, and only one more issue of Rocket Stories and three of Science Fiction Adventures appeared, the final issue of the latter being dated May 1954. ## Contents and reception ### Space Science Fiction In his editorial for the first issue of Space Science Fiction, del Rey declared that the title did not restrict the magazine to fiction about space, interpreting space as "extension in all directions", including fantasy, though as it turned out Fantasy Magazine became the outlet for the fantasy stories del Rey acquired. "Our only taboo will be against dullness", del Rey claimed and, according to science fiction historian Mike Ashley, "by and large del Rey kept his word". The first issue of Space Science Fiction was put together from what del Rey was able to acquire quickly. He worked with Frederik Pohl's literary agency to find stories, and contributed the lead story, "Pursuit", himself, under the pseudonym "Philip St. John". Other contributors to the first issue included Henry Kuttner, with "The Ego Machine", one of his humorous robot stories, and Isaac Asimov, with "Youth". Del Rey also wrote the lead story for the second issue, under another alias, "Erik van Lhin". The cover layout changed to mirror the inverted "L" format used by Galaxy, the cover artwork being reduced in size and a strip of color at the left and top edges of the cover. Del Rey again obtained material from well-known writers: Clifford Simak, Fletcher Pratt, and Murray Leinster appeared. The issue also included "The God in the Bowl", the first of Robert E. Howard's unpublished Conan the Barbarian stories to be revised for publication by L. Sprague de Camp; de Camp had obtained H. P. Lovecraft's notes on the story, and those were published as well. Later issues featured three serialized novels: H. Beam Piper's Ullr Uprising, T. L. Sherred's Cue for Quiet, and Poul Anderson's The Escape, which was cut short after one installment when the magazine ceased publication. It was later published in full, retitled Brain Wave. Del Rey also bought Algis Budrys' first sale, "Walk to the World", which appeared in the November 1952 issue, and published some of Philip K. Dick's early stories, including "Second Variety", which appeared in the May 1953 issue. Other contributors included Damon Knight and James E. Gunn. Interior artists included Paul Orban, Kelly Freas, Peter Poulton and Alex Ebel; Hannes Bok and Earle Bergey were among the cover artists. ### Science Fiction Adventures Science Fiction Adventures was initially intended to contain more action-oriented stories than Space Science Fiction. Del Rey explained his goals for the magazine in an editorial in the first issue: "We also feel that science fiction isn't meant to be educational. It is primarily fiction, not a discourse on science. The science in the stories should be acceptable, of course... But the problems of the people in the stories must be stressed more than the gadgets they use." Fiction in the first issue included The Fires of Forever, a novel by Chad Oliver, stories by L. Sprague de Camp and C. M. Kornbluth, and a non-fiction article by del Rey. In the opinion of science fiction historians Ted Krulik and Bruce Tinkel, the magazine improved over its first year; they particularly praise Police Your Planet, a novel by del Rey that began serialization in the March 1953 issue under the pseudonym Erik van Lhin, and Raymond Gallun's Ten to the Stars. Well-known writers from whom del Rey was able to obtain stories included Algis Budrys, Robert Sheckley, Ross Rocklynne, and Wilmar Shiras. When Harrison took over as editor, he had little time to make his mark on the magazine, but notable stories during his tenure include Kornbluth's novel The Syndic, which was serialized in Harrison's first two issues. Harrison also printed "The Hanging Stranger", an early Philip K. Dick story, in the December 1953 issue, and Thomas Scortia's first sale, "The Prodigy", in the March 1954 issue. Many of the cover artists were well-known in the field, including Alex Schomburg, Mel Hunter, Ed Emshwiller, and H. R. Van Dongen. Interior artists included Roy Krenkel, Kelly Freas and Paul Orban. A series of articles about science fiction appeared, including William Tenn's "The Fiction in Science Fiction", described by Krulik and Tinkel as "one of the first to treat science fiction as a serious form of literature". Damon Knight, one of the most important literary critics of science fiction to emerge from within the genre, contributed a series of book reviews; he had begun the column, titled "The Dissecting Table", in 1950 in the short-lived magazine Worlds Beyond, and continued it in Science Fiction Adventures. Ashley considers that it although it took some time for the effects of Knight's reviews to appear, the column drove "a wedge into the [science fiction] world and [began] to separate what was good from what was bad". After Science Fiction Adventures folded, Knight's column continued, in Future Science Fiction and elsewhere, and Knight's criticism was later collected into In Search of Wonder, which won a Hugo Award in 1956. In Ashley's opinion, the magazine quickly developed into one of the stronger science fiction (SF) magazines of the day, and Krulik and Tinkel agree, describing it as "one of the more interesting and better edited SF magazines to appear in the 1950s. It was a shame that the publisher did not care about the magazine; Science Fiction Adventures could have been one of the most successful magazines of the 1950s." ### Rocket Stories Rocket Stories was aimed at a more juvenile audience than Raymond's other science fiction magazines, and del Rey openly acknowledged the similarities between space opera stories and Westerns in his editorials, writing "We aren't calling the magazine science fiction, for the same reason that stories of the old west were never called science or invention fiction. Colt, in inventing the revolver, made that west possible, and the men who are working on the rockets will make our future possible." He persuaded Algis Budrys to write a straightforward Western translated into science fiction terms, titled "Blood on My Jets", and under the house name Wade Kaempfert printed stories by two Western writers, Noel Loomis and H. A DeRosso. Other fiction contributors included Poul Anderson, Milton Lesser, George O. Smith, and John Jakes; artists included Ed Emshwiller, Paul Orban, and Kelly Freas. Science fiction historian E. F. Casebeer considers that the magazine published some good material, and that it contained "far more than its covers and title might imply". ### Fantasy Magazine For Fantasy Magazine, Del Rey declared an editorial policy focused on modern fantasy, rather than gothic horror: "Fantasy...is a game of logic. Like fairy chess, it should be a game of logic where the basic rules are flexible, filled with some delightful surprise to twist the mind out of the rut, and must be played with consummate skill to be at all interesting." This approach placed Fantasy Magazine in the newer fantasy tradition begun by Unknown in 1939 and carried on by Beyond Fantasy Fiction, rather than the older gothic tradition then exemplified by Weird Tales. The first issue of Fantasy Magazine contained a Conan story by Robert E. Howard, edited by L. Sprague de Camp and rewritten by del Rey, based on Howard's story "The Black Stranger"; another Conan story, also rewritten by de Camp, followed later in the year. Del Rey published work by Algis Budrys, L. Sprague de Camp, John Wyndham, Clark Ashton Smith, Philip K. Dick, Katherine MacLean, Harry Harrison and Robert Sheckley, and obtained covers from Hannes Bok for all four issues of the magazine. Ashley describes the magazine as "another high-quality product", and "highly collectible", and science fiction historian Russell Letson agrees: "[it] combined attractive appearance...with above-average fiction", and comments that it ceased publication "long before its potential was exhausted". It was popular with the readership of the day; science fiction historian David Kyle says that it "won considerable acclaim", and Donald Tuck, a science fiction bibliographer and encyclopedist, records that "many fantasy enthusiasts rated it the best fantasy magazine since Unknown". ## Bibliographic details Each issue of each of the four magazines was digest-sized, 160 pages, and priced at 35 cents, and the publisher in each case was John Raymond. The publishing company used was Science Fiction Publications for the first issue of Science Fiction Adventures, Future Publications for the remaining issues of Science Fiction Adventures and for Fantasy Magazine, and Space Publications for Space Science Fiction and Rocket Stories. The editorial succession is given in the table at right. Del Rey used a pseudonym for his editing work in some cases: the first two issues of Rocket Stories were edited under the house name "Wade Kaempfert", and the first six issues of Science Fiction Adventures were edited under one of del Rey's aliases, "Philip St. John". For the last issue of Fantasy Magazine del Rey used the house name "Cameron Hall" as the editor. A British edition of Space Science Fiction was issued by Archer Press in 1952 and 1953; these were undated, but numbered from 1/1 to 2/3, with five issue numbers to a volume. These reprinted the US issues unchanged, except that the first US issue was printed as the British volume 2 number 3, and the second through eighth US issues were printed as the first through seventh UK issues.

2017 EFL Trophy final

English football match between Coventry City and Oxford United

The 2017 EFL Trophy Final was an association football match that was played on 2 April 2017 at Wembley Stadium, London. It was played between League One teams Coventry City and Oxford United. The match decided the winners of the 2016–17 EFL Trophy, a 64-team knockout tournament comprising clubs from League One and League Two of the English Football League (EFL), as well as 16 Category One academy sides representing Premier League and Championship clubs. It was Coventry's first appearance in the final and the second for Oxford, who were beaten by Barnsley in the previous season's match. The game was played on a sunny day in front of a crowd of 74,434, the highest attendance for the final since the opening of the new Wembley Stadium. The referee was Chris Sarginson. Oxford dominated possession in the first half, but lacked sufficient potency in attack. It was Coventry who led at half time, scoring through Gaël Bigirimana after 11 minutes with the first meaningful chance of the game. Ten minutes into the second half, George Thomas made it 2–0 to Coventry with a low volley from the edge of the penalty area. Liam Sercombe pulled a goal back for Oxford 15 minutes before the end, but despite a series of shots on goal in a last-minute attack, they were unable to equalise and Coventry won 2–1 to earn their first major trophy since their victory in the 1987 FA Cup Final. The win was a highlight for Coventry's supporters in what was otherwise a disappointing season, as they were relegated to League Two. Oxford were challenging for a play-off place in the league at the time of the final but were unsuccessful, finishing in eighth place. At the end of the season, representatives from League One and League Two clubs voted to continue with the 64-team format for the following two seasons. This decision was supported by Coventry manager Mark Robins but opposed by his opposite number Michael Appleton, who stated a preference for reverting to the format involving just League One and League Two clubs. ## Background The EFL Trophy was inaugurated as the Associate Members' Cup in the 1983–84 season and followed on from the short-lived Football League Group Cup. The competition was renamed to the Football League Trophy in 1992, and to the EFL Trophy in 2016, coinciding with the Football League rebranding to the English Football League (EFL). It is open to all 48 clubs in EFL League One and EFL League Two, the third and fourth tiers of the English football league system and, starting with the 2016–17 season, 16 Category One academy teams, representing clubs from the Premier League and Championship. The tournament originally used a straight knockout format, but was modified in 2016–17 to incorporate an initial group stage, in which a team is awarded three points for a win and zero for a defeat. In the event of a draw, a penalty shoot-out is held at the end of the game with the winner of the shoot-out receiving two points and the loser one. In the 2016–17 season it was referred to by its sponsorship name, the Checkatrade Trophy. The 2016–17 tournament was the 34th edition of the competition. Coventry City and Oxford United both appeared in the competition as a result of their membership of League One for the 2016–17 season. Coventry were making their first appearance in a League Trophy final while for Oxford it was their second, following a 3–2 defeat to Barnsley in the previous season's match. Both teams had won a major Wembley cup final during the 1980s – Oxford beat Queens Park Rangers in the 1986 Football League Cup Final, and Coventry won the following season's FA Cup Final against Tottenham Hotspur. The two sides had won one game each of the head-to-head league meetings that season. At Coventry's Ricoh Arena, in October 2016, Coventry won 2–1 with goals from Ben Stevenson and Marvin Sordell and a late consolation for Oxford by Dan Crowley. The return fixture at the Kassam Stadium a month later was won by Oxford with Kane Hemmings, Jamie Sterry, Chris Maguire and Alex MacDonald all scoring as the match finished 4–1. ## Route to the final ### Coventry City Coventry's 2016–17 EFL Trophy campaign commenced in the group stage, competing in Southern Group D along with Wycombe Wanderers, Northampton Town, and a team from the West Ham United academy. West Ham were one of 16 academy teams from Premier League and EFL Championship clubs appearing following the tournament revamp in the summer of 2016. In Coventry's first match, played on 30 August 2016, they hosted the West Ham academy team at the Ricoh Arena. The game's attendance – 2,091, of whom just 98 were away supporters – set a record for the lowest gate at a Coventry first-team game since they started playing at the stadium in 2005. West Ham took the lead against the run of play after 33 minutes with a Toni Martínez goal, but Coventry quickly equalised with Jordan Turnbull's first goal for the club. They took the lead early in the second half through Rúben Lameiras with a Jordan Willis goal and Turnbull's second sealing the win. The final score was 4–2 as Martínez scored a late consolation goal for the visitors. Their second group game was at home to Northampton in early August, with an attendance – 2,085 – even lower than that of the West Ham game. Coventry took the lead after just 20 seconds through Dan Agyei but Northampton levelled 70 seconds after that through Marc Richards. Jodi Jones restored City's lead in the seventh minute and Lameiras scored in the second half to seal a 3–1 win. Both Coventry and Wycombe had already qualified for the last 32 when the teams met at Adams Park in November, but the match was relevant in determining which team would have home advantage in the next round, as group winner. Prioritising their league campaign over the Trophy, Coventry fielded a weakened team with just five starters from the previous league game – the minimum permitted under competition rules. The hosts took a 2–0 lead through Stephen McGinn and Scott Kashket but a brace from Ryan Haynes and a George Thomas tap-in, all in the space of nine-second-half minutes, turned the match around. Jones added another to make it 4–2 to Coventry. Coventry's first fixture in the knockout phase was against Crawley Town at the Ricoh Arena. The match came amid a poor run of form for City, and the crowd of 1,338 represented the third time the stadium's low attendance record for a first-team game had been broken in the 2016–17 competition. Sordell scored the only goal after 35 minutes, in a game which lacked quality by either side. On 10 January 2017, Coventry played their last-16 game against the Brighton & Hove Albion academy team. With a line-up significantly changed from their regular league team, they played what journalists Alan Poole and Andy Turner of the Coventry Telegraph described as "one of their most rounded displays of the season". Goals from Lameiras, Thomas and Haynes secured a comfortable 3–0 win and passage to the quarter-finals. The quarter-final match was played later in January, as City travelled to Wales for a match against the academy side of Swansea City. After a lacklustre first half, Swansea won a penalty after the interval when Haynes fouled Oli McBurnie. The Swansea striker took the kick and put his side in front. Coventry then equalised close to the end of normal time through an own goal by Adnan Marić, as he fought for a header with Willis in the penalty area. The game went to a penalty shoot-out, which Coventry won 4–2. Thomas, Burundian international Gaël Bigirimana, Kyel Reid and Lameiras all scored their kicks while goalkeeper Reice Charles-Cook saved penalties by Swansea's Botti Biabi and George Byers. Coventry's semi-final saw them play Wycombe Wanderers for the second time in the campaign, this time at the Ricoh Arena. A crowd of 11,672 watched the game, which was also televised on Sky Sports. Coventry scored two early goals through Stuart Beavon and Thomas, and looked comfortable at half-time with a 2–0 lead. Wycombe were much stronger in the second half, buoyed by the arrival of striker Adebayo Akinfenwa. He pulled a goal back on 55 minutes and Wycombe dominated the remainder of the match, launching a succession of attacks on the City goal. Coventry hung on for a 2–1 victory that earned them their first match at Wembley Stadium since the 1987 FA Charity Shield match, which followed their triumph in that year's FA Cup. ### Oxford United Oxford were placed in Southern Group C for the group phase, alongside Exeter City and Swindon Town. Like Coventry, they also faced a Premier League academy side, that of Chelsea. Their opener was against Exeter at the Kassam Stadium in late August. Tyler Roberts opened the scoring for Oxford early in the game and Chris Maguire doubled their lead on 35 minutes with a penalty. Goals from Matt Jay and Liam McAlinden drew the Devon side level, but strikes from Ryan Taylor and Alex MacDonald in the final 20 minutes sealed a 4–2 win for United. For their second match on 4 October 2016, they travelled to local rivals Swindon Town. It was an ill-tempered game with six yellow cards issued, two for Swindon and four for Oxford. There was also a straight red card before half time for MacDonald after he stamped on Swindon's Anton Rodgers. The game finished 0–0, the drawn fixture leading to a penalty shoot-out. Five of the nine penalties taken were saved, three by Swindon keeper Will Henry and only two by Oxford's Simon Eastwood, resulting in a 3–1 shoot-out win and two points for Swindon, with one point for Oxford. Oxford travelled to Stamford Bridge for their final group game on 8 November, to face the Chelsea academy team. United needed just one point to secure qualification, while their hosts were already eliminated following two defeats, but it was Chelsea who scored first through Josimar Quintero, shortly before half time. The young Chelsea team appeared to be on the verge of their first ever win in the tournament until Kane Hemmings scored an equaliser for Oxford in injury time at the end of the game. The game therefore went to penalties to decide which team would take two points from the game, and which team just one. With 34 penalties taken, 17 by each side, the shoot-out set the English football record for the most kicks, eclipsing the previous record of 32 which had occurred on two occasions. Chelsea were the eventual winners, by a score of 13–12, as the shoot-out concluded with a goal scored and then a goal saved by Blues keeper Bradley Collins. They, therefore, scored two points to Oxford's one, but the visitors nonetheless progressed through to the second round as runners-up to Swindon. For their second-round match, Oxford travelled to Roots Hall for a match against Southend United. The match remained goalless until close to the end when Maguire scored for Oxford, a free-kick from 27 metres (30 yd) out. The lead was short-lived, as Southend's Anthony Wordsworth equalised immediately. For the third game in a row in the competition, Oxford faced a penalty shoot-out. This time they were successful, scoring all but one of their kicks while Eastwood saved from Southend's Simon Cox and Stephen McLaughlin's penalty went over the bar. Their reward was a home tie in the last 16, in which they hosted Scunthorpe United. The visitors dominated early and took the lead after ten minutes, Luke Williams scoring a penalty after he had been fouled in the area. Duane Holmes then took a shot when he had only Eastwood to beat, but the Oxford goalkeeper saved it. Oxford turned the game around, Marvin Johnson equalising on 18 minutes in the team's first attack of the game and taking the lead four minutes later. Hemmings was the scorer of this goal and he added two more in the second half, one of them a penalty, to complete his hat-trick as Oxford won the game 4–1. The quarter-final, in January 2017, was also played at the Kassam, with Bradford City as their opponents. Weary after a dramatic FA Cup match against Newcastle United during the weekend, United started the game tentatively, relying on two saves by Eastwood to keep the game goalless. They played much better after half-time, following a tactical switch. Midway through the second half, Bradford's Rory McArdle had to leave the pitch to receive treatment for a head injury. Oxford capitalised on the temporary advantage, scoring twice in two minutes through Maguire and Johnson. Jordy Hiwula pulled one back for the visitors with five minutes remaining, but Oxford held on to book their place in the semi-final. Their final-four game was played at Kenilworth Road against Luton Town on 1 March 2017. Once again Oxford relied on Eastwood for crucial saves early in the game, but they then took the lead as Phil Edwards fired in while sitting on the ground, after a mis-hit shot by Liam Sercombe. They doubled their lead after 69 minutes through Johnson and appeared to be heading for a comfortable win until Luton retaliated with two goals of their own, from Isaac Vassell and Danny Hylton. Oxford clinched the match shortly after the equaliser, however, Johnson scoring with an 18-metre (20 yd) left-footed shot to book his team's place in the final. ## Match ### Pre-match With Coventry at the bottom of League One and Oxford challenging for a play-off place, City manager Mark Robins was pragmatic about his team's prospects of victory. In a radio interview before the game, he said that "there's no pressure on us, we're underdogs in terms of league position". He urged his players to make the most of their day out at Wembley Stadium but also noted that the best way to enjoy the occasion would be to win the match. As he had not been the club's manager during their progress to the final, Robins chose to eschew the usual convention that the manager leads out the team. In his place, the club selected coach and former goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic, who had played in the FA Cup winning team 30 years earlier. Oxford manager Michael Appleton addressed the issue of low supporter turnout following the inclusion of academy teams in the tournament. He voiced his own frustration about the matter but also asked Oxford supporters to attend the game. "The more support we can get on the day, the better. All we can promise as a club and as a team is that we'll be going all out to try and win the game and bring a bit of silverware back," he commented in an interview with BBC Radio Oxford. Coventry City sold around 42,500 tickets for the match, outnumbering the opposition fans. The referee for the match was Chris Sarginson, who had officiated Coventry once during the league season, a 0–0 draw with Oldham Athletic in December. His most recent game involving Oxford was a goalless draw at Exeter in 2014. The assistant referees were Neil Radford and Matthew Parry, with Dean Whitestone named as the fourth official. Chris Husband was the reserve assistant referee. Robins made a number of changes from the side that had beaten Bristol Rovers in the previous league game, including the replacement of Ollie Clarke by Chris Stokes, and Lameiras playing instead of Jones. First team goalkeeper Lee Burge played in goal, rather than Reice Charles-Cook who had played in the semifinal against Wycombe. Oxford named a close to full strength side with midfielder Ryan Ledson returning from international duty with the England under-20 team and Maguire being declared fit to start after injury worries. Joe Rothwell retained his place after playing well in the previous league game against Bury. The weather on the day of the final was sunny and fans of both sides arrived at the game with what journalists covering the match for BBC Sport described as "club-based paraphernalia that only seems to make appearances on days like this". Former Coventry manager John Sillett, who had led the club to their FA Cup win 30 years earlier, appeared on the pitch before the kick-off and made a speech to the club's supporters. The national anthem before the game was sung by Natalie Rushdie, performing in her fifth appearance at a Wembley event. The attendance at the game of 74,434 was at the time the highest for the EFL Trophy at the new Wembley Stadium since its opening in 2007. This record was broken in the 2019 final between Portsmouth and Sunderland. ### First half The match began at 14:30 BST, with both sets of supporters singing loudly. After a quiet opening with just one shot on goal by either side, Coventry took the lead on 11 minutes through a Bigirimana goal, his second for the club. The Burundian midfielder was the first to react to the loose ball after a Beavon volley had been stopped. Oxford began pressing more consistently after falling behind and had chances to equalise on 15 minutes, when Curtis Nelson challenged for a corner with Turnbull, and on 22 minutes when John Lundstram had a clear shot in the penalty area but failed to kick it cleanly. Ledson committed a heavy foul on Coventry's Kyel Reid on 18 minutes, but was not booked. Oxford continued to control the game as the half-hour mark approached, with striker Maguire gaining frequent possession of the ball, but Coventry were able to defend and looked threatening themselves when attacking, particularly through Reid. Oxford appealed for a penalty after 31 minutes, when Haynes made contact with Hemmings, but the referee turned them down and replays suggested it was a legal shoulder-to-shoulder challenge. Bigirimana then received the first yellow card of the game after 39 minutes following a foul on Ledson. Coventry went close to scoring a second shortly before half time as a Lameiras shot from the edge of the penalty area was blocked. Attacking on the break, Oxford then had their best chance of the first half. Johnson received the ball close to the sideline and fired in a cross for Robert Hall, but the Oxford striker's shot went wide of the goal. The score remained 1–0 as the half-time whistle was blown. In its online commentary of the game, the Oxford Mail reported that despite their team's dominance of possession, they had lacked sufficient potency in attack. The Coventry Telegraph in its minute-by-minute report urged Robins to tell his players that they "need to start asking Oxford a few more questions rather than being forced to defend what appears to be a fragile lead". ### Second half Play resumed at 15:34 with no changes made by either team during the interval. Coventry had an early corner but it passed through the penalty area without anyone able to connect. Hemmings then stopped playing after he thought he had been fouled, but the referee adjudged that there was no infringement and Coventry were able to mount an attack. Beavon's shot was saved by Eastwood, however. Coventry dominated the opening ten minutes of the second half and went close to a second goal when Thomas beat the United defence, though the attack broke down when his cross was off target. Thomas then forced Eastwood to make a difficult save from a close-range shot. On 55 minutes City finally made the breakthrough: once again it was Thomas who had the chance, receiving a cross from the edge of the area by Reid and firing the resulting volley low into the corner of the goal. The BBC Sports correspondents covering the game described it as a "stunning, stunning goal". Oxford made a substitution, replacing Ledson with Sercombe, and responded positively once again to conceding but remained unable to penetrate the City defence. Coventry made their first substitution on the hour mark as Willis went off injured, replaced by Dion Kelly-Evans. Oxford had their best chance of the second half on 74 minutes, as Maguire attempted to score from a free kick but Burge was able to tip it over the crossbar. One minute later they scored their first goal of the game. After winning a corner, which was taken by Maguire, Coventry cleared the ball, but it fell to Sercombe who hit a low shot through several players and into the corner of the net. Burge got one hand to the ball but was unable to stop it. United had a chance to level the game four minutes after scoring, as Hall found himself one-on-one with Burge, but he wasted the opportunity and the City keeper was able to make the save. A threatened Oxford breakaway on 82 minutes was stopped by a Bigirimana foul; the Coventry player had already been booked and the BBC reporter at the game thought he would be sent off, but the referee decided to punish him only with a free kick. Oxford continued to press as the game drew to a close. With one minute left of the five minutes of stoppage time allocated, Oxford won a corner. Eastwood joined the attack in the Coventry penalty area as Oxford had several shots on goal, but following a Burge save and a clearance off the goal line by the defence, City were able to escape. The game finished shortly afterwards, with a final score of Coventry City 2–1 Oxford United. ### Details Sources: ## Post-match Coventry's win gave them their first major trophy since their victory in the 1987 FA Cup Final. Thomas was named the man of the match, telling interviewers that "to get the winner at Wembley in a cup final is what dreams are made of". Like Robins he praised the club's fans, saying they had "been unbelievable throughout the whole season and today everyone came and had a great time". Robins commented on the importance of the victory for Coventry's supporters. "It's 30 years since they’ve been to Wembley", he said after the game, "and it was really important for us as a football club to show the world that we are still alive and kicking. It gives everybody a reminder that we have a really good fanbase and there's so much potential at this place." In his post-match interview, Oxford manager Appleton said his principal feeling about the game was one of frustration. "The game was probably decided in both boxes today. Coventry had a hunger and a desire to keep the ball out of the net more than we did. When you need to win finals, that's the type of desire you need," he said. The Lord Mayor of Coventry had commented before the game that he would be open to the possibility of a parade and civic reception, similar to that after the team's victory in the 1987 FA Cup. The club declined to pursue this, however. Despite the cup win, Coventry were relegated to League Two at the end of the season, finishing 23rd out of 24 teams in League One. Their stay in the league's bottom tier was limited to one season, however, as they returned to Wembley one year later for the 2018 League Two play-off final, recording a 3–1 win against Exeter City. Oxford United still retained the possibility of reaching the play-offs at the time of the final, but they eventually finished the season in eighth place, four points adrift of Millwall who took sixth place and the final play-off berth. At the end of the 2016–17 season, representatives from League One and League Two clubs met to discuss the future of the EFL Trophy, in particular, whether to retain the inclusion of academy teams. There were three options under consideration – retaining the 64-team format, dropping the academy teams and reverting to a 48-team tournament, or cancelling the competition altogether. There was some disagreement among the clubs, but ultimately the 64-team version was retained for at least the next two seasons, gaining support from two-thirds of the League One and League Two outfits. Robins was among those supporting the format, commenting that it had provided an "invaluable experience for those players at an Under-21 level to participate in senior football", citing the experience of his own young players and the opportunity they had received to play at Wembley. Appleton was more critical of the format, preferring to return to the 48-team version. He commented that the use of loan deals and reserve team football was a better way for top clubs to develop their academy players than participating in the EFL Trophy, citing his own experience playing for Manchester United reserves during the 1990s.

History of the Montreal Canadiens

History of the ice hockey club

The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club, formally Le Club de Hockey Canadien, was founded on December 4, 1909. The Canadiens are the oldest professional hockey franchise in the world. Created as a founding member of the National Hockey Association (NHA) with the aim of appealing to Montreal's francophone population, the Canadiens played their first game on January 5, 1910, and captured their first Stanley Cup in 1916. The team left the NHA and helped found the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917. They returned to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1919, but their series against the Seattle Metropolitans was cancelled without a winner due to the Spanish flu pandemic that killed defenceman Joe Hall. The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup 24 times: once while part of the National Hockey Association (NHA), and 23 times as members of the NHL. With 24 NHL titles overall, they are the most successful team in league history. The Canadiens' home rink, the Montreal Arena, was destroyed by fire in January 1918. The team moved into the Jubilee Arena, which subsequently burned down in 1919. After spending seven seasons in the Mount Royal Arena, the Canadiens moved into the Montreal Forum in 1926, sharing it with the rival Montreal Maroons until 1938. After 72 years in the Forum, they moved to the Bell Centre in 1996. The club struggled during the Great Depression, nearly relocating to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935 and contemplated suspending operations in 1939. Their fortunes rebounded following World War II as they reached the Stanley Cup Finals each year from 1951 to 1960, winning six championships, including a record five consecutive titles from 1956 to 1960. Maurice "Rocket" Richard emerged as the team's star in the 1940s, and during the 1944–45 season became the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals in a single season. Richard sparked the Richard Riot in March 1955 when he was suspended for attacking a linesman. The incident highlighted growing tensions between French Quebec and English Canada, and is regarded as one of the first manifestations of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. In 1959, Jacques Plante revolutionized the game when he became the first goaltender to consistently wear a mask during play. Under general manager Sam Pollock, the Canadiens won nine championships between 1964 and 1978. The 1976–77 team, often regarded as the greatest in NHL history, won 60 games while losing only 8, a record for fewest losses in an 80-game season. With the entry of the World Hockey Association's Quebec Nordiques to the NHL in 1979, a rivalry grew between the Canadiens and the Nordiques, peaking in 1984 when the Canadiens eliminated the Nordiques in six games, but not before the Good Friday Massacre made headlines. Led by goaltender Patrick Roy, the Canadiens won their 23rd Stanley Cup in 1986 and their 24th in 1993. Roy won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs' most valuable player both times. The 1993 team set an NHL record with 10 consecutive overtime victories in one playoff year and is the most recent Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup. In 2003, Montreal participated in the first regular season outdoor game in NHL history, defeating the Edmonton Oilers in the Heritage Classic. The Hockey Hall of Fame has inducted over 50 former Canadiens players, as well as ten executives. The team has retired 15 numbers, representing 17 players, and has honoured ten off-ice personnel in its Builder's Row. ## Founding In November 1909, industrialist Ambrose O'Brien of Renfrew, Ontario, was in Montreal to purchase supplies for a railway contract. At the request of the Renfrew Creamery Kings hockey team, he attended the Eastern Canada Hockey Association (ECHA) meetings, held at the Windsor Hotel, to represent Renfrew in its application to join the league. At the meeting, the ECHA team owners rejected Renfrew's application. Later that day the ECHA's owners chose to disband their league and form the Canadian Hockey Association (CHA) in a bid to exclude the Montreal Wanderers, who had upset the other owners when they moved into a smaller arena that would reduce the visiting team's share of gate receipts. In the lobby of the hotel, O'Brien met Jimmy Gardner, manager of the Wanderers, and discussed forming a new league which would include Renfrew, the Wanderers, and two teams that O'Brien owned in the Ontario mining towns of Cobalt and Haileybury. Gardner suggested that O'Brien start a team of francophone players based in Montreal, forming a rivalry with the Wanderers. As a result, the National Hockey Association (NHA) was founded on December 2, 1909, and Les Canadiens were created two days later, initially financed by O'Brien with the intent of transferring ownership to francophone sportsmen in Montreal as soon as possible. At the time, francophone teams were not considered to be good enough to play with the top anglophone teams: the Montreal Gazette warned potential fans of the new team not to get too excited, as "French-Canadian players of class are not numerous". The Canadiens stocked their team with francophone stars including Newsy Lalonde, Georges Poulin and Didier Pitre. Before being allowed to play, Pitre had to resolve a lawsuit with the Montreal Nationals, to which he was already under contract. ## 1910–17: National Hockey Association The Canadiens played their first game on January 5, 1910, coached by Jack Laviolette. Before a sellout crowd of 3,000, they defeated Cobalt 7–6 in overtime. The victory was erased from the history books shortly after, as the CHA collapsed after only two weeks of play, and the NHA chose to restart the season after absorbing the CHA's Ottawa Senators and the Montreal Shamrocks. The Canadiens' first game of the new season was played January 19, a 9–4 loss to the Renfrew Creamery Kings. They lost three more games before finally recording their first victory of the new season on February 7, when they defeated the Haileybury Hockey Club by a score of 9–7. They won only two of their 12 games that season, and finished last in the eight-team league. George Kennedy, owner of the Club Athlétique Canadien (CAC), claimed rights to the "Canadiens" team name following the season. He settled the dispute by buying the team from O'Brien for \$7,500. That same year, the team adopted its now-famous red sweater with a blue stripe across the front. In the middle of the stripe was an elongated red C encompassing a red A to represent the CAC. The Canadiens reached the playoffs for the first time in 1913–14 when they tied the Toronto Blueshirts for the league lead with 26 points. The two teams played a two-game series for the championship, with the winner based on total goals. Georges Vezina shut out the Blueshirts 2–0 in the first game, but the Canadiens were defeated 6–0 in the second and lost the series. Two years later, in 1915–16, the Canadiens won the NHA championship, the O'Brien Cup, with a 16–7–1 record, three wins better than the second place Senators. The title earned the Canadiens their first berth in the Stanley Cup Finals, where they faced the Portland Rosebuds of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA). With the best-of-five series tied at two wins apiece, the deciding game was held at Westmount Arena in Montreal on March 30, 1916. Montreal's Goldie Prodgers scored the winning goal with less than four minutes to play, giving the Canadiens their first Stanley Cup championship. In 1916, the CAC faced financial difficulty after a January fire destroyed its gymnasium and the Montreal Canadians lacrosse team failed. Kennedy separated the hockey club from the CAC and incorporated it in March 1916 as "Le club de Hockey Canadien". The Canadiens changed their logo to a red "C" interlocked with a white "H". The H in the logo stands for "hockey," though the long-standing misconception that it stands for "Habitants" led to the team being nicknamed "the Habs". The NHA met its demise in the winter of 1917 following several long-running disputes between Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone and the league's other four teams over who owned the rights to various players. Kennedy especially disliked Livingstone, and the two nearly came to blows numerous times during league meetings. However, the Canadiens, Wanderers, Senators and Quebec Bulldogs discovered that while they were united in their distaste for Livingstone, the league constitution didn't allow them to simply vote him out. To solve this problem, on November 26 they created a new league, the National Hockey League (NHL), and didn't invite Livingstone to join them. They nominally remained members of the NHA and had enough votes to suspend the league's operations, effectively leaving Livingstone in a one-team league. Kennedy was the dominant force in the new league; he not only owned the Canadiens, but had loaned Tommy Gorman the money he used to buy the Senators. However, the four teams still desired to have a team from Toronto in their league. They also needed a fourth team to balance the schedule after financial difficulties forced the Bulldogs to suspend operations (as it turned out, they wouldn't take the ice until 1919). With this in mind, they granted a "temporary" franchise to the Toronto Arena Company, which eventually evolved into the Canadiens' rivals, the Toronto Maple Leafs. ## 1917–32: early National Hockey League Joe Malone recorded five goals for the Canadiens in their NHL debut, a 7–4 victory over the Senators, en route to a league leading 44 goal season. The fledgling league nearly collapsed on January 2, 1918, after a fire destroyed the Montreal Arena, home to both the Wanderers and the Canadiens. The Canadiens relocated to the 3,000-seat Jubilee Arena, but the Wanderers ceased operations, reducing the NHL to three teams. Playing a revamped split season schedule, Montreal won the first half title, but lost the league championship to second half winning Toronto by a score of 10–7 in a two-game, total goals series. The Canadiens won the NHL championship against the Senators in 1918–19, and traveled west to meet the PCHA champion Seattle Metropolitans for the Stanley Cup. The series is best remembered for its cancellation due to the Spanish flu pandemic. Several players from both teams became ill, prompting health officials in Seattle to cancel the sixth, and deciding, game. With his entire team either in the hospital or confined to bed, Kennedy attempted to borrow players from the PCHA's Victoria Aristocrats, only to be turned down by PCHA president Frank Patrick. With no way to field a team, Kennedy announced he was forfeiting the game—and the Cup—to the Metropolitans. However, the Metropolitans turned it down; coach Pete Muldoon felt that with the Canadiens decimated by the flu, it wouldn't be sportsmanlike to claim the title. Star defenceman Joe Hall never recovered, and died on April 5, 1919. During the following summer, the Jubilee Rink burned down, forcing the Canadiens to build Mount Royal Arena as a replacement. The team also lost their star player Malone, who had been on loan from the dormant Bulldogs as Quebec rejoined the league in 1919–20. Kennedy died in 1921; he had never recovered from the 1919 flu. His widow sold the team to Leo Dandurand, former player Joseph Cattarinich and Louis A. Letourneau. Regarded as one of the NHL's first superstars, Howie Morenz made his debut in 1923–24 alongside Aurel Joliat. The club placed second in the league to Ottawa, but defeated the Senators in the playoffs to win the league championship and reach the Stanley Cup Finals. Montreal hosted the 1924 Stanley Cup Finals against the Calgary Tigers of the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL). The Canadiens won the best-of-three series in two games, and captured their second Stanley Cup. Morenz was the offensive star of the series, scoring a hat trick in game one and a goal in game two. The Montreal Forum, which in later decades became synonymous with the Canadiens, was opened in 1924 to house the expansion Montreal Maroons, one of two new teams in the NHL that season. The Canadiens were invited to inaugurate the arena as the natural ice surface at the Mount Royal Arena was not ready to host NHL games. The team played the first game in Forum history on November 29, 1924, a 7–1 victory over the Toronto St. Patricks. The Canadiens took residence at the Forum in 1926, sharing it with the Maroons until the latter ceased operations in 1938. Only nine days after their first NHL regular season game at the Forum, on December 8, 1924, what would become the new NHL's longest running rivalry was initiated as the Canadiens played "the other" expansion team for the 1924–25 season for the very first time: the United States-based Boston Bruins, whom the visiting Canadiens, playing for their first-ever NHL regular season game in the United States, defeated in a 4–3 comeback victory at the Boston Arena. For the 1924–25 season, the Canadiens celebrated their world champion status with a special jersey design. The team moved their CH logo to their sleeves and played with a large world globe logo crest on their jersey fronts. Montreal finished third in the league standings and defeated Toronto in the semi-final. The players on the first-place Hamilton Tigers refused to participate in a playoff series unless they were paid an additional \$200 each. When they failed to relent on their demands, NHL president Frank Calder suspended the entire team, and declared the Canadiens to be the league champions. The Habs thus traveled to the Pacific Coast to play the WCHL's Victoria Cougars in the 1925 Stanley Cup Finals. The Cougars won the best-of-five series, 3–1; it was the last time a non-NHL team won the Stanley Cup. Georges Vezina collapsed during the first game of the 1925–26 season. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis and never played again, succumbing to the illness in March 1926. In his honour, the team donated a new award to the league, the Vezina Trophy, to be given to the goaltender who allowed the fewest goals over the course of the season. The first recipient was his replacement, George Hainsworth. Vezina was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame upon its creation in 1945. During the 1927–28 season, Morenz became the first player in NHL history to score 50 points in a single season. Morenz was the first NHL player to score a second Stanley Cup winning goal, with the Canadiens' victory in the 1930 Stanley Cup Finals over the Boston Bruins. The Bruins, who finished with a 38–5–1 record and at one point during the season went 23 games without a defeat, lost consecutive games to Montreal in the finals, 3–0 and 4–3. The Canadiens became the fourth team in Stanley Cup history to repeat as champions, defeating the Chicago Black Hawks in five games to capture the 1931 Stanley Cup championship. ## 1932–46: Howie Morenz and Rocket Richard Attendance was in decline across the league as the Great Depression took hold. The Habs posted a losing record in 1932–33, leading to still smaller crowds. Averaging only 2,000 fans per game, the team sold Morenz to the Chicago Black Hawks in 1934 as part of an effort to cut costs. The move was not a popular one, and fans voiced their opinion of the deal by giving Morenz a standing ovation when he scored against the Canadiens on the last day of the 1934–35 season. With losses of \$60,000 over the previous two seasons, the Canadiens were put up for sale in 1935. Dandurand and Cattarinich entered negotiations to sell the club and move it to Cleveland, Ohio, but a syndicate of local Montreal businessmen led by Maurice Forget and Ernest Savard stepped forward to buy the team and prevent the transfer. The Canadiens struggled on the ice, finishing with the worst record in the league in 1935–36. The new owners asked Cecil Hart to coach the team, in the hopes that he would bring the Habs back to respectability. Hart agreed with one stipulation: that the Canadiens bring back Morenz. The team agreed, and acquired an overjoyed Morenz in a trade with the New York Rangers. Morenz's return to Montreal lasted less than a season: in January 1937, while being checked by Chicago's Earl Seibert, his skate caught on the ice and Morenz broke his leg in four places. He never recovered, and died of a coronary embolism on March 8. Aurel Joliat offered a different explanation of his death: "Howie loved to play hockey more than anyone ever loved anything, and when he realized that he would never play again, he couldn't live with it. I think Howie died of a broken heart." On the day of his funeral, 50,000 people filed past Morenz's casket at centre ice of the Montreal Forum to pay their last respects to the man the media called "the Babe Ruth of hockey". A benefit game in November 1937 raised \$20,000 for Morenz's family as the NHL All-Stars defeated the Montreal Canadiens 6–5. Morenz was one of the first players elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame when it was created in 1945. The Canadiens continued to finish near the bottom of the league standings for several seasons. The low point came in 1939–40: Babe Siebert, who was named the Habs' coach following his retirement as a player in 1939, drowned before the season began, and Pit Lepine was named as his replacement. With an aging roster, the Canadiens finished last, winning only 10 games. That team's .260 winning percentage is still the worst in franchise history. Largely due to the team's poor play, the Canadiens only drew 3,000 fans per game, leading Savard and his partners to consider suspending operations at least for the duration of World War II. Instead, they sold the franchise to the team's landlord, the Canadian Arena Company. At this point, relief arrived from an unexpected quarter—Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe. The Depression had already forced three teams to either shut down outright or suspend operations never to return. Additionally, the New York Americans had been wards of the league since 1936, and it was considered to be only a matter of time before they folded (they eventually did, in 1942). Smythe did not want to see the Canadiens fold, and suggested that the Arena Company hire the Maple Leafs' former coach, Dick Irvin. Irvin was a proven winner, having led the Maple Leafs to seven finals and one Cup in nine years. The Arena Company readily accepted Smythe's suggestion, and turned to Irvin to lead the once-proud team's revitalization. By 1943, the war effort had a devastating effect on many rosters. The Red Wings lost nine players and the Maple Leafs lost six to the military. The Rangers lost ten players and had to be persuaded by the other teams not to suspend operations. In contrast, the Canadiens lost only one key player in Ken Reardon. Young phenom Maurice Richard tried to enlist, but was turned down due to his medical history. Canadiens General Manager Tommy Gorman reportedly ensured his players obtained jobs in key wartime industries to avoid conscription. Led by the "Punch Line" of Richard, Toe Blake and Elmer Lach, the Habs won their fifth Stanley Cup in 1944, losing only five games in the regular season. In 1944–45, the team won 38 games and lost only eight, and Richard was the focus of the media and fans as he attempted to be the first player in league history to score 50 goals in a 50-game season. Richard set a single-game scoring record, recording five goals and three assists in a 9–1 victory over Detroit on December 28, 1944. He later broke Joe Malone's goal scoring record when he scored his 45th goal, after which opposing teams did all they could to prevent him from reaching the 50-goal mark. He was slashed, elbowed and held as no team wanted to be known as the one that gave up the milestone goal. Richard finally scored his 50th goal in Boston at 17:45 of the third period of Montreal's final game of the season. The record, previously considered nearly impossible to achieve, elevated Richard to the status of provincial hero in Quebec. ## 1946–67: the Original Six Prior to the expansion of the NHL in 1967, the league was reduced to six franchises, which would become known after 1967 as the "Original Six". Frank J. Selke replaced Tommy Gorman as general manager of the Canadiens in 1946, and held the post until 1964. Selke spent several years attempting to sign teenage star Jean Beliveau to play for the Canadiens. Beliveau played brief stints with the Habs in 1950 and 1952, but his loyalty to the Quebec Aces of the Quebec Senior Hockey League led him to turn the Canadiens down repeatedly when they pressed him to move to Montreal full-time. The Canadiens finally bought the entire Quebec senior league in 1953 and turned it professional in order to bring Beliveau into the fold, and he signed a five-year contract for \$100,000. He spent his entire 18-year, Hall of Fame NHL career with the Habs. In March 1955, Richard was suspended for the remainder of the season, including the playoffs, after he received a match penalty for slashing Boston's Hal Laycoe and subsequently punching a linesman who intervened. The suspension touched off a wave of anger toward league president Clarence Campbell, who was warned not to attend a scheduled game in Montreal after receiving numerous death threats, mainly from French-Canadians accusing him of anti-French bias. Campbell dismissed the warnings, and attended the March 17 game as planned. His presence at the game was perceived by many fans as a provocation and he was booed and pelted with eggs and fruit. An hour into the game, a fan lobbed a tear-gas bomb in Campbell's direction, causing fire officials to clear the building. Fans leaving the Forum were met by a growing mob of angry demonstrators who overwhelmed the 250 police officers on the scene and rioted outside of the Forum. Seventy people were arrested, 37 people injured, 50 stores were looted and \$100,000 in property damage was reported as a result of the melee, which became known as l'affaire Richard, or the Richard Riot. The incident highlighted the growing cultural gap between French Quebec and English Canada and the riot is often described as an early manifestation of Quebec's Quiet Revolution. The following day, Richard went on a French-language Montreal radio station to ask the fans to stop rioting and instead to support the Canadiens in the playoffs. He also said he would accept his punishment and return the following year to win the Cup. While the Canadiens were defeated in the 1955 Stanley Cup Finals, Richard led Montreal to the 1956 Stanley Cup as he promised. The 1955–56 season was the first as head coach for Toe Blake, who was hired to help control Richard's temper. The 1956 victory began an unprecedented streak of five consecutive Stanley Cups for the Canadiens from 1956 to 1960; the 1960 Stanley Cup Finals was Montreal's tenth consecutive appearance in the championship series. Richard, the first player to score 500 career goals in NHL history, retired in 1960 with 544 career goals and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1961. The customary three-year waiting period was waived in honour of his accomplishments. Goaltender Jacques Plante had been wearing a mask during practices for some time, but did not wear it during games due to the objections of Blake and Selke who held the traditional view that players should not wear facial protection. That changed on November 1, 1959, after he was struck in the face early in a game at Madison Square Garden. As teams did not dress backup goaltenders during this time, the game was delayed 20 minutes while doctors frantically stitched Plante up. When Blake asked him if he was ready to return to play, Plante refused to return to the ice unless he was allowed to wear a mask. Blake was livid, but agreed only if Plante removed the mask when his face was healed. Wearing the mask, Plante led the Canadiens on an 18-game unbeaten streak. He finally removed the mask at Blake's urging and promptly lost the next game. Defeated, Blake relented. Plante's mask became a permanent fixture as he led the Canadiens to their fifth consecutive Stanley Cup. Other goalies followed Plante's lead soon after. When the NHL instituted the NHL Amateur Draft in 1963, the Canadiens were given the option to replace their regular first selection with two "Cultural Picks" that could be used to draft up to two French-Canadian players before any other team made any selections. The team used one cultural pick in 1968, and both in 1969, when it drafted Rejean Houle and Marc Tardif, two top prospects. This option was eliminated after the 1969 draft. Selke retired in 1964 and was succeeded by Sam Pollock. Often named the best general manager in NHL history, Pollock led the Canadiens to nine Stanley Cup championships in his 14 years at the helm of the team. One of his key tactics was trading aging stars to expansion teams for draft picks, which led to the team drafting future Hall of Famers Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson and Ken Dryden. The Canadiens won consecutive titles in 1965 and 1966, and entered the 1967 Stanley Cup Finals against Toronto as a heavy favourite. The City of Montreal was so confident in the Canadiens that they had already built a space for the Stanley Cup on the Expo 67 site, but the Canadiens fell to the Maple Leafs, in the last NHL finals of the Original Six era. ## 1967–79: expansion era The NHL doubled in size to 12 teams in 1967–68 and organized itself into two divisions: the East Division, with the original six teams, and the West Division, which contained the six expansion franchises. The playoff format was constructed so that an established team would face an expansion team in the Stanley Cup Finals. The Canadiens recovered from their loss in 1967 to sweep the St. Louis Blues four games to none in both 1968 and 1969 for their 15th and 16th championships. The Canadiens missed the playoffs entirely in 1969–70, losing the last playoff spot in the East on a tiebreaker. On the last day of the season, New York defeated the Red Wings 9–5, tying Montreal in points and obtaining a five-goal lead on the Canadiens in total goals scored for the season. Montreal needed to win its game against the Black Hawks, or score at least five goals to qualify for the postseason. Trailing 5–2 with eight minutes to play, head coach Claude Ruel pulled his goaltender for an extra skater and watched Montreal surrender five empty net goals while scoring none to lose the game 10–2 and the final playoff spot to the Rangers. It was the only time between 1948 and 1995 that the Canadiens failed to make the playoffs. The team rebounded in 1970–71, winning its 17th Stanley Cup. Rookie Ken Dryden had played only six games in his NHL career when he was named the starting goaltender for the playoffs. He led the team to series wins over Boston, Minnesota and Chicago, winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs. Team captain Jean Beliveau, the fourth player in league history to score 500 career goals, announced his retirement following the season. Despite his Cup triumph, Al MacNeil was removed as coach after just one season amidst conflicts with several players, including Henri Richard, who described MacNeil as being "incompetent" during the playoffs. MacNeil was replaced by Scotty Bowman, a Montreal native and former Blues coach. Bowman coached the Canadiens for eight seasons, winning five Stanley Cups, including four in a row from 1976 to 1979. Following the success of the Summit Series in 1972, a series of exhibition games between NHL and Soviet league clubs known as the Super Series was launched. On New Year's Eve 1975, the Canadiens met the Soviet Red Army in a game that is considered to be one of the greatest ever played. A contest between the two greatest hockey teams in the world, the match ended in a 3–3 draw following Soviet goaltender Vladislav Tretiak's 35-save performance. The 1976–77 Canadiens won 60 games in an 80-game schedule, losing only eight times, and just once at home. Guy Lafleur led the league in scoring, and won the Hart, Lester B. Pearson, Art Ross and Conn Smythe trophies; Dryden won the Vezina Trophy, Bowman the Jack Adams Award and Larry Robinson the James Norris Memorial Trophy. The Canadiens were so dominant that Dryden complained to The Hockey News that he was "a little bored" by the lack of competition. The 1976–77 Canadiens are widely considered to be the greatest team in NHL history, though arguments exist for the 1955–56 and 1975–76 Canadiens teams as well. The 1978–79 season capped Montreal's run of four consecutive championships in dramatic fashion. Facing the Bruins in the seventh game of the league semi-finals, Montreal trailed 4–3 with less than two minutes to play when Boston head coach Don Cherry accidentally sent too many players onto the ice during a line change, drawing what would become one of the most famous penalties in NHL history, and eventually costing Cherry his job. During the subsequent power play, Lafleur scored the game-tying goal with 74 seconds remaining in regulation time, and Yvon Lambert scored in overtime to win the game and series. The Canadiens proceeded to defeat the Rangers for the Cup in five games. The Canadiens' dominance in the late 1970s was due in part to the presence of the rival World Hockey Association (WHA) (which had begun play in 1972) — the Canadiens were far more successful compared to other NHL teams in resisting WHA efforts to lure away top talent. The Canadiens played a central role in the 1979 merger with the WHA, which added the Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets to the NHL. After years of talks, a merger agreement was reached between the two leagues, but the NHL's governors rejected the deal by one vote. Most of the NHL's American teams were in favour of the merger in part because they thought it would help them challenge Montreal's dominance, whereas against the deal were the Canadiens, who, along with the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs, opposed splitting Hockey Night in Canada television revenues six ways instead of three. Upon hearing the result of the vote, fans in Edmonton, Quebec and Winnipeg launched a massive boycott of products sold by Molson, owners of the Canadiens since 1978. The boycott, along with pressure from the House of Commons of Canada, led Montreal and Vancouver to reverse their positions when a re-vote was held on March 22, 1979, allowing the merger to pass. ## 1980–96: transitions The Canadiens entered the 1980s in transition, as Dryden, Lemaire and team captain Yvan Cournoyer announced their retirements in 1979, and Serge Savard followed suit in 1981. A trade during the 1982–83 season sent Rod Langway and Doug Jarvis to the Washington Capitals. Among their replacements were Swedish star Mats Naslund and forward Guy Carbonneau. Bob Gainey was appointed by the club to succeed Savard as team captain. Guy Lafleur remained the team's offensive star, recording his 1,000th career point in 1981 in just 720 games, the fastest anyone had reached that milestone in NHL history, and a record that stood until broken by Wayne Gretzky in 1984. Doug Wickenheiser was selected by Montreal with the first pick at the 1980 NHL Entry Draft. The decision was highly controversial as the fans in Montreal had hoped the team would take francophone star Denis Savard. Wickenheiser's transition to the NHL was difficult; his popularity was harmed by comparisons of his struggles to Savard's immediate success with the Black Hawks. He was traded to the Blues midway through the 1983–84 season. Gainey explained the changing fortunes of the franchise following their playoff defeat at the hands of the Nordiques in 1982: "We can't put on our sweaters anymore and expect to win." The Canadiens' mystique had been broken by consecutive playoff losses to the upstart Minnesota North Stars, the Oilers and the Nordiques. The loss to Quebec in 1982 was the culmination of a vicious series where the players attempted to hurt and intimidate their opponents, while the media argued over which team better represented francophone Quebec. Montreal's growing rivalry with Quebec peaked two years later in 1984 when they eliminated the Nordiques in six games, but not before the Good Friday Massacre made headlines. A hit by Quebec's Dale Hunter on Montreal goaltender Steve Penney sparked a bench-clearing brawl at the end of the second period. A second brawl, including some players who were ejected as a result of the first, erupted before the start of the third period. Ten players were ejected from the game, and 198 penalties in minutes were handed out as a result of the incidents, which proved a turning point in the game as Montreal scored five third period goals to win. Rookie goaltender Patrick Roy led the Canadiens to their 23rd Stanley Cup championship in over the Calgary Flames in the first all-Canadian Stanley Cup Finals since . The 1986 Canadiens were young and led by rookie head coach Jean Perron and forward Claude Lemieux, in addition to Roy, who became the youngest player in NHL history to win the Conn Smythe Trophy. Brian Skrudland, another rookie, scored the game-winning goal just nine seconds into overtime of the second game of the finals — the fastest overtime goal in NHL history. The two teams met again in the 1989 Stanley Cup Finals, the most recent all-Canadian Stanley Cup Finals, with the Flames emerging victorious in six games. It was the only time a visiting team defeated the Canadiens to win the Cup on Forum ice. The Stanley Cup celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1993, returning again to Canada with the Canadiens' 24th Stanley Cup victory, the most recent NHL championship won by a Canadian team. After losing the first game of their Adams Division semi-final to the Quebec Nordiques in overtime, the Canadiens won ten overtime games en route to the title, setting an NHL record for most consecutive overtime victories in a playoff year. As with the 1986 championship, the team was led by Roy, who won his second Conn Smythe Trophy. The defining moment of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals occurred in the second game, with less than two minutes to play and Montreal trailing the series 1–0 and the game 2–1. Attempting to gain an advantage for his team, head coach Jacques Demers called for a measurement of Los Angeles Kings forward Marty McSorley's stick. Referee Kerry Fraser determined that the blade had an illegal curve, and assessed a penalty against McSorley. Montreal scored on the power play to tie the game, and then won in overtime 3–2, to tie the series. Montreal also won Games 3 and 4 in overtime before eliminating the Kings in Game 5, 4–1. The celebration was marred by one of the worst riots in Montreal history, as fans rioted through downtown Montreal causing over \$2.5 million in property damage and 168 injuries. The Canadiens failed to repeat their success in 1993–94, as the team was eliminated from the playoffs by the Bruins in seven games. Montreal's loss in Game 6 was the last playoff game ever played at the Montreal Forum. The team missed the playoffs entirely in 1994–95, the first time in 25 years the Canadiens did not qualify, and the third time in 55 seasons. Montreal rebounded to make the playoffs in 1995–96, but the future of the team was altered on December 2, 1995, when the Canadiens were embarrassed 11–1 by the Red Wings. Patrick Roy allowed nine goals on 26 shots before he was pulled in the second period to mock cheers from the Montreal crowd. Roy was furious, and felt that head coach Mario Tremblay deliberately left him in to be embarrassed. After reaching the bench, he moved past Tremblay to Canadiens President Ronald Corey, who was seated in the first row, and declared, "This is my last game in Montreal." Four days later, Roy was dealt to the Colorado Avalanche with Mike Keane in exchange for Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andrei Kovalenko. The deal vaulted the Avalanche, the former Nordiques, to the 1996 Stanley Cup. Roy won another title with the Avalanche in 2001 along with a third Conn Smythe Trophy before retiring in 2003 with more wins than any NHL goaltender. The Canadiens, meanwhile, fell into an extended stretch of mediocrity, missing the playoffs in four of their next ten seasons and failing to advance past the second round of the playoffs until 2010. The team's lack of playoff success brought an end to its streak of winning a Stanley Cup in each decade from the 1910s to the 1990s. The sport's changing economics led the Canadiens to build a new arena in 1996 to increase revenue. The final game at the Forum was held March 11, 1996, a 4–1 victory over the Dallas Stars. Following the game, an elaborate ceremony was held with many of the franchise's greatest members welcomed onto the rink. The most boisterous response was reserved for Maurice Richard, who received a ten-minute standing ovation. Finally, Emile Bouchard, the oldest living former captain, came onto the ice bearing a lit torch, and it was passed in a symbolic trail through the Canadiens' history: Bouchard passed it to Richard, who passed it to Jean Beliveau, and so on in chronological order to each former captain present, ending with Pierre Turgeon. In 72 years at the Forum, the Canadiens won over 1,500 games and captured 22 Stanley Cups. ## 1996–2009: new home and new owners Five days after the closing of the Montreal Forum, the Canadiens played its first game at the Molson Centre (since renamed the Bell Centre). With a capacity of 22,500, the Bell Centre claims to be the largest indoor arena in North America. In the inaugural game, Montreal defeated the Rangers 4–2, with the first goal scored by Vincent Damphousse. The Canadiens qualified for the playoffs but struggled to achieve playoff success in the new arena during the arena's first three seasons. The Habs were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Rangers in six games in 1996 and by the New Jersey Devils in 1997, respectively. In 1998, they won their first playoff series since their 1993 championship by defeating the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games; however, they would get swept by the Buffalo Sabres in the second round of the playoffs. It would be the last time the Canadiens would win a playoff series until 2002. Montreal finished in last place in the Northeast Division in 1998–99 and missed the playoffs. Their 75 points was the lowest total in a full season in 40 years. The season concluded with rumours of the team being sold and relocated if it did not receive government subsidies to help alleviate pressures from Quebec's tax system and the record-low value of the Canadian dollar. The Canadiens denied the report, however Molson hired investment bank Morgan Stanley to examine its future involvement in sports. Montreal missed the playoffs again the next two seasons, and annual losses of \$10–\$12 million and a desire to focus on its core brewing business led Molson to put the franchise up for sale in the summer of 2001. When no local buyers emerged for the team and a proposed Canadian government assistance program for the six remaining Canadian teams was canceled following public disapproval, it was feared that the Canadiens would follow the Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques in relocating to the United States. American businessman George N. Gillett Jr. purchased an 80.1% share of the team and 100% of the Molson Centre for \$275 million. As part of the deal, Molson retained 19.9% of the team and were granted the right of first refusal for any future sale by Gillett; in addition, the NHL Board of Governors would be required to unanimously approve any attempt to move to a new city. Following a poor start of 5–13–2 in their first 20 games of the 2000–01 season, the Canadiens fired head coach Alain Vigneault and promoted Michel Therrien to the position. The Habs would finish the season in last place in the Northeast Division with a record of 28–40–8–6. Prior to the 2001–02 season, the club announced that captain Saku Koivu had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and would miss the entire season. Koivu managed to return with three games left in the regular season, and along with goaltender Jose Theodore, who would win the Hart Trophy that year, led the Canadiens into the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. The eighth-seeded Canadiens upset the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs, and Koivu led the team in playoff scoring with 10 points in 12 games. In recognition of his tenacity in returning from cancer treatment, the league voted Koivu as the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy winner for dedication and perseverance. However, in the second round of the playoffs, the team was defeated by the Carolina Hurricanes in six games. The Canadiens finished fourth in the Northeast Division in the 2002–03 season, missing the playoffs by six points. After the Habs finished with a record of 18–19–5–4 in the first 48 games of the 2002–03 season, the team replaced Therrien with Claude Julien. The first outdoor hockey game in NHL history, the Heritage Classic, was held on November 22, 2003, in Edmonton, Alberta, at Commonwealth Stadium. The Canadiens defeated the Oilers 4–3 in front of an NHL-record crowd of 57,167, who braved temperatures of −20 °C (−4 °F). The success of the Heritage Classic led to the creation of the Winter Classic, an annual outdoor game held since 2008. In the 2004 playoffs, the seventh-seeded Canadiens upset the Bruins in seven games in the first round, but they were later defeated by the Tampa Bay Lightning in a four-game sweep in the second round. The 2004–05 NHL lockout cancelled the 2004–05 season entirely. After the Montreal Expos franchise departed for Washington, D.C., in 2005, the Canadiens acquired former Expos mascot Youppi to serve as their first-ever mascot. Having missed the playoffs in 2006–07, the Canadiens rebounded to win their first division title in 15 years in 2007–08, as well as their first regular season conference title since 1989. ## 2009–present: Molson family acquires team Ownership of the Canadiens once again passed to the Molson family in 2009 after Gillett sold the team, Bell Centre, and Gillett Entertainment Group to a partnership headed by Geoff Molson and including his brothers Andrew and Justin. The sale price was estimated at over \$600 million. Unlike the pre-Gillett era, the team is now privately owned by the Molson family and not by the Molson brewery, which is now a division of Molson Coors. The reputed sale price reflected a return to profitability, due both to a new collective bargaining agreement after the 2004–05 lockout that fixed player costs to revenues and to a rise in the value of the Canadian dollar back to at or near parity with the U.S. dollar. On the ice, the team reached the 2010 playoffs as the eighth seed for the second year in a row, yet upset the top-seeded Washington Capitals and the then-defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins in the first two rounds. The Habs lost the Eastern Conference finals to the Philadelphia Flyers. The NHL revived the Heritage Classic concept, with the Canadiens facing the Calgary Flames at McMahon Stadium in Calgary on February 20, 2011. The Flames defeated the Canadiens, by a score of 4–0, before a crowd of 41,022 spectators. The 2011 Heritage Classic was the second outdoors game held during the 2010–11 season, following the 2011 NHL Winter Classic. The Habs finished the 2011–12 season last in their conference for the first time in over 80 years, as injuries decimated the team all season. After a disappointing season, the Canadiens started over in the front office. They fired General Manager Pierre Gauthier, and Marc Bergevin was named the new general manager on May 2, 2012. The search then began for a new head coach and on June 5, Michel Therrien was named the new head coach. This would be Therrien's second stint as the Canadiens head coach after he previously coached the team from 2000 to 2003; and Randy Cunneyworth and Randy Ladouceur were relieved of their assistant coaching duties. On June 15, Gerard Gallant, J. J. Daigneault and Clement Jodoin were added to Montreal's coaching staff as assistant coaches. The team rebounded in the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season, moving up from 15th place to second, but lost 4–1 in the first round against the Ottawa Senators, their fourth-straight playoff series loss. Defenceman P. K. Subban was awarded the James Norris Memorial Trophy as the League's best defenseman, the first since Chris Chelios in 1989. The next season, the Canadiens made the playoffs yet again following a 100-point season and in the first round, eliminated the Tampa Bay Lightning in a four-game series sweep. They then faced the reigning Presidents' Trophy-winning Boston Bruins, and eliminated them in seven games to make the Eastern Conference Finals for the second time since their 1993 Stanley Cup victory and the first time since 2010. During game 1 against the New York Rangers, Chris Kredier ran into Carey Price injuring his leg. Carey Price wouldn't return with the Canadiens as they fell to the Rangers in six games. In the 2014–15 season, the team won their third division title since 1992 and proceeded to defeat the Senators in six games in the first round. However, they lost in the second round to the Lightning in six games. The season was successful due to a strong performance by goaltender Carey Price, who won the Vezina Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award, in addition to sharing the William M. Jennings Trophy for the fewest goals allowed during the regular season. The Habs started the 2015–16 season with a nine-game winning streak, and posted an 18–4–3 record in the first two months of the season. However, after winning 19 of their first 26 games, the team struggled offensively and lost many players, including Price, to injuries. The Canadiens ultimately finished sixth in the Atlantic Division and did not qualify for the playoffs for the first time since the 2011–12 season. The team participated for the first time in the NHL Winter Classic, defeating the Boston Bruins. On November 4, 2016, goaltender Al Montoya allowed 10 goals in a 10–0 Canadiens road loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets; the Habs later scored 10 goals in a 10–1 home win over the Colorado Avalanche on December 10, 2016. While the team started the 2016–17 season with a record of 13–1–1 in their first 15 games, they only went 18–18–7 in next 41 games but would remain in first place in the Atlantic Division through the first 56 games of the season. As a result, the Habs fired Therrien and replaced him with Claude Julien on February 14, 2017; this was the second time that Julien (who was fired by the Bruins on February 7) replaced Therrien as head coach in the history of the Canadiens franchise. On March 30, 2017, the Canadiens qualified for the playoffs after a 6–2 home victory against the Florida Panthers; they would clinch the Atlantic Division title a few days later. Despite winning their second division title in the past three seasons, the Habs would ultimately lose their first round playoff series to the Rangers in six games. The Canadiens failed to reach the playoffs in each of the next two seasons, entering a period of rebuilding that saw them trade away veteran faces like Tomas Plekanec, Alex Galchenyuk, and Max Pacioretty. In 2020, the Canadiens sat in 12th place in the Eastern Conference with a 31–31–9 record when the league shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the season resumed in August 2020, Montreal was one the last of 12 Eastern Conference teams invited to partake in a bubbled postseason tournament in Toronto. Seeded 12th, the Canadiens took on the Pittsburgh Penguins in a best-of-five series during the Eastern Conference's Qualifying Round where they defeated the Penguins in four games. Jeff Petry's overtime goal set the tone for the series in Game 1, while Price stopped 22 shots in a shutout effort in the clincher to give the Canadiens a 3–1 series win. The team then battled the top-seeded Philadelphia Flyers in the best-of-seven first round, but lost in six games. For the 2020–21 NHL season, the Canadiens were paired with the other six Canada-based squads in the North Division, a temporary set-up while the league operated its season amidst the health crisis. In the midst of the season, Julien was fired on February 24, 2021, and was replaced by assistant coach Dominique Ducharme. Montreal took the last of four playoff spots in the North, facing their top-seeded rivals from Toronto in the first round. It was the first playoff matchup between the Canadiens and Maple Leafs since 1979. Toronto jumped out to a 3–1 series lead, but the Canadiens responded with three consecutive victories, the first two coming in overtime. Montreal swept the third-seeded Winnipeg Jets in four games, earning the last victory on an overtime goal by Tyler Toffoli. In the following round, Montreal defeated the Vegas Golden Knights with a game six overtime goal by Artturi Lehkonen, advancing to its first Stanley Cup Finals appearance since 1993. The Canadiens also became the first Canadian team to advance to the finals since 2011. The run would end however with the Canadiens losing in the Finals to the Tampa Bay Lightning in five games. On July 23, 2021, Bergevin announced that the Canadiens were "proud to select" Logan Mailloux with the 31st pick of the 2021 NHL entry draft. Mailloux had been convicted of sexual misconduct in a Swedish court for distributing a sexually-explicit image of an 18-year-old woman to his teammates without her consent. Further, Mailloux had previously announced that he was withdrawing from the draft, on the grounds that he lacked the "maturity and character" required to "earn the privilege" of being drafted. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a lifelong Canadiens fan, announced that he was "deeply disappointed" by Bergevin's decision to select Mailloux, and stated that the selection demonstrated a lack of judgment on the part of the Canadiens. Isabelle Charest, Quebec's Minister for the Status of Women, expressed that she was also surprised and disappointed by the pick. In 2021–22, the Canadiens were unable to replicate their success from the prior season, ultimately finishing last in the league for the first time since the 1939–40 NHL season and the first time in the NHL's expansion era, in one of the worst seasons in the team's history. In the process they set team records for most regulation losses (49), most goals against (319), fewest wins (22), and fewest points (55), while its .335 point percentage was the team's third-worst ever, after only 1925–26 (.319) and 1939–40 (.260). After the team started the season 6–15–2, owner Molson fired Bergevin, amateur scouting chief Trevor Timmins, and communications head Paul Wilson, hiring former New York Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton to serve as executive vice president of hockey operations, tasked with hiring a new general manager for the team. Gorton subsequently hired Kent Hughes for the position. Gorton and Hughes announced plans to modernize team operations. As a result of the team's last-place finish in the 2021–22 season, the Canadiens won the draft lottery to select first overall in the NHL Entry Draft for the first time in 42 years. ## Retired numbers The Canadiens have retired 15 numbers, honouring 18 players. Howie Morenz's number 7 was the first jersey to be retired, shortly after his death in 1937. Maurice Richard's number 9 followed in 1960; his 544 career goals are a franchise record. Henri Richard, brother of Maurice, was honoured in 1975 with the retirement of his number 16, after 21 seasons and 11 Stanley Cups with the Canadiens. Henri holds the franchise games-played record with 1256. Jean Beliveau's number 4 was retired in 1971 after he left the game as the all-time leading scorer in Stanley Cup playoff history. Beliveau was offered, but declined, the position of Governor General of Canada in 1994; he is the only hockey player known to have been asked to serve in this capacity. Guy Lafleur's number 10 followed in February 1985 after his first retirement. Lafleur was a six-time All-Star with the Canadiens, and won three scoring titles and two most valuable player awards. Also in 1985, Doug Harvey's number 2 was raised to the rafters. The defenceman won six Norris Trophies as the NHL's top defenceman in seven years between 1955 and 1961. Jacques Plante's number 1 was retired on October 17, 1995. Plante revolutionized the way goaltenders played the game, and he leads the Canadiens with 314 career wins. Leading up to their centennial year, the Canadiens retired the jerseys of several players. They began with three former greats during the 2005–06 season. Montreal first retired the number 12 in honour of both Dickie Moore and Yvan Cournoyer. Moore was a member of the Canadiens' dynasty of 1956–1960, while Cournoyer won ten titles between 1965 and 1979. Bernie Geoffrion was the third player honoured by the Canadiens. Nicknamed "Boom Boom", Geoffrion was considered the innovator of the slapshot. He died on March 11, 2006, the same day his number 5 was retired. Serge Savard's number 18 was retired on November 18, 2006. Savard also served as the team's general manager for ten years. His defensive partner Larry Robinson's number 19 was retired one year later, as was Bob Gainey's number 23. Gainey was considered one of the game's elite defensive forwards, winning four Selke Trophies and five Stanley Cups before serving as coach and general manager of the team. Patrick Roy's number 33 was retired on November 22, 2008. Roy's jersey retirement was a return "back to the Canadiens family" for the Hall of Fame goaltender, who had not maintained a relationship with the organization after his trade demand in 1995. Emile Bouchard's number 3, and Elmer Lach's number 16 were retired on December 4, 2009, as part of the team's centennial celebration. (Lach had played as 16 before Richard did.) They retired Guy Lapointe's number 5 during the 2014–15 season. ### Builders Row The Canadiens created "Builders Row" in 2006 to honour the off-ice members of the club who helped lead the team to success. Seven people were initially inducted: team founder Ambrose O'Brien; former owners Leo Dandurand, Joseph Cattarinich, Louis A. Letourneau and Hartland Molson; former team president Donat Raymond; and special advisor William Northey. In 2008, the team added its three legendary coaches to the Row: Dick Irvin Sr., Toe Blake and Scotty Bowman. The three served a combined 36 years behind the Canadiens' bench from 1940 to 1979. ## Hockey Hall of Famers The Hockey Hall of Fame was created in 1945 with nine initial player inductees, including two Canadiens: Howie Morenz and Georges Vezina. Morenz was considered hockey's first superstar, and in 1950 was voted the top hockey player of the half-century. Vezina perfected the "stand up" style of goaltending in an era when goaltenders were not allowed to drop to their knees to cover the puck, and became the standard by which future goaltenders judged themselves. Maurice Richard, inducted in 1961, and Jean Beliveau, inducted in 1972, are two of ten players for whom the selection committee has waived the otherwise-mandatory three-year waiting period before being eligible for induction. Defenceman Doug Harvey was unanimously elected in 1973, one year after being denied entry due to his drinking habits. Angered by the snub, Harvey refused his induction, stating that he planned to go fishing instead of attending the induction ceremony. Guy Lafleur was one of three players in NHL history (along with Gordie Howe and Mario Lemieux) to return to playing after being elected. Lafleur, who had first retired in 1984 after growing frustrated with the Canadiens' defence-focused system, returned to the league days after his 1988 election, playing for the New York Rangers and Quebec Nordiques before finally retiring in 1991. As of 2009, over 50 former Canadiens players have been elected to the Hall of Fame. Source: Hockey Hall of Fame ## See also - List of Montreal Canadiens seasons - History of the National Hockey League - List of Stanley Cup champions

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished

Oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty

The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is a large oil painting on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1825 and now in the National Gallery of Scotland. Inspired by the Elgin Marbles and intended by the artist to provide a moral lesson on "the beauty of mercy", it shows a near-nude warrior whose sword has broken, forced to his knees in front of another near-nude soldier who prepares to inflict a killing blow. A woman, also near-nude, clutches the victorious warrior to beg him for mercy. Very unusually for a history painting of the period, The Combat does not depict a scene from history, literature or religion and is not based on an existing artwork, but is instead a scene from the artist's own imagination. When it was shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1825, it attracted near-universal praise from critics for its technical excellence, its fusion of the styles of different schools of painting, and its subject matter. Nevertheless, it failed to find a buyer at the Summer Exhibition, and was instead bought by fellow artist John Martin. The painting proved too large for Martin's house, and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the National Gallery of Scotland, where it remains. ## Background William Etty was born in 1787, the son of a York baker and miller. He began as an apprentice printer in Hull. On completing his seven-year apprenticeship he moved at the age of 18 to London "with a few pieces of chalk crayons", with the intention of becoming a history painter in the tradition of the Old Masters. Strongly influenced by the works of Titian and Rubens, he submitted paintings to the Royal Academy of Arts and the British Institution, all of which were either rejected or received scant attention when exhibited. In 1821 the Royal Academy accepted and exhibited one of Etty's works, The Arrival of Cleopatra in Cilicia (also known as The Triumph of Cleopatra). The painting was extremely well received, and many of Etty's fellow artists greatly admired him. Following the praise for Cleopatra, Etty tried to replicate its success by painting nude figures in biblical, literary and mythological settings, most notably A Sketch from One of Gray's Odes (Youth on the Prow) in 1822, and the controversial Pandora Crowned by the Seasons in 1824. Etty had travelled extensively in Italy in 1823, and painted Pandora hastily on his return as a "testimonial of recent progress" he had made while studying paintings in Italian collections. Critical opinion of Pandora was highly divided, with some critics greatly praising it as a technical accomplishment, while others saw it as a rushed pastiche of Titian and Rubens. Pandora Crowned by the Seasons sold for 300 guineas (about £ in 2023 terms), and secured Etty the position of Associate at the Royal Academy of Arts. While some nudes by foreign artists were held in private English collections, the country had no tradition of nude painting and the display and distribution of nude material to the public had been suppressed since the 1787 Proclamation for the Discouragement of Vice. Etty was the first British artist to specialise in the nude, and the reaction of the lower classes to these paintings caused concern throughout the 19th century. Many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent, although his portraits of male nudes were generally well received. ## Composition Etty was fascinated with classical artworks such as those he had seen during his recent travels in Italy, and in particular with the Elgin Marbles, a set of major Ancient Greek sculptures taken to London in controversial circumstances in the early 19th century. The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished is a large painting, 399 cm (13 ft 1 in) across. It depicts a defeated soldier, kneeling in front of another soldier. The defeated fighter strains to free himself from the grip of the victorious warrior, who stands, raising a sword. A kneeling woman clutches the waist of the victorious soldier, raising her face to him to beg him to spare his defeated foe. The defeated warrior has a stronger body, a face more in keeping with the conventions of attractiveness at the time, and a more sympathetic expression, while the victorious man is darker skinned and has an expression of blank fierceness. The vanquished soldier's sword has broken, and lies beside him on the ground. Etty did not base The Combat on any single incident from history or literature, or on any existing artwork, but on his own imagination; this was a highly unusual step to take regarding history paintings, which generally depicted themes from literature or religion. He had been considering the topic as early as 1821, and his plans took shape following his visit to Italy. During this visit Etty had met Antonio Canova and been very impressed by him; The Combat is clearly influenced by his work. As well as drawing inspiration from classical sculpture, he was also strongly influenced by the composition of Old Master works he had seen while in Italy. As with many of Etty's works, the models posed for him separately in his studio, rather than as a group. Etty, writing in 1849, described the purpose of The Combat as "to paint a great moral on the heart [of] the beauty of mercy." Etty's 1958 biographer Dennis Farr points out similarities in the composition of The Combat and John Flaxman's drawing Heracles Killing a Man to whom a Woman Clings, but while Etty and Flaxman were contemporaries at the Royal Academy, it is not known if Etty was aware of this drawing. In the initial oil study for the defeated warrior (York Art Gallery), Etty gave the character a more defiant appearance than seen in the finished version. In this preliminary sketch he is not on his knees, but thrusts his leg out to brace himself. He has an expression of defiance and determination, rather than the plea for mercy and posture of total defeat shown in the final work. The completed The Combat: Woman Pleading for the Vanquished was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1825. ## Reception On its exhibition, The Combat was generally highly praised by critics for its technical excellence, its combination of the Venetian and English styles of painting, and as an indication that Etty was moving away from nudity and towards history painting. The European Magazine, and London Review commented that "in colour this picture strongly reminds us of the great heroes of the Venetian school, while in learned intelligence of form, and energy of action, it greatly surpasses them", observing that "we should not have the least objection to seeing this picture placed in one of the very first galleries, by the side of Titian and Paul Veronese." In similar vein, The Lady's Magazine felt that The Combat "strongly demonstrates the progress of [Etty] to excellence", remarking that "never was a groupe more calculated to display the action in which the power of conquest is so eminently and fearfully delineated" and that "we have little doubt that the works of Titian were, on their first appearance ... what this piece is now." The same correspondent did find some flaws in the overly pronounced muscles of the victor's thigh and the lack of definition of muscle in the legs of the defeated man, but felt that despite this The Combat was "one of the finest and most masterly works that ever graced the walls of the Royal Academy." The London Magazine was similarly effusive about the painting, admiring Etty's ability to fuse his own imagination with themes derived from the Elgin Marbles and from the Venetian Old Masters, and commenting that "it is always gratifying to those who feel for the honour and independence of painting when, as in the present instance, an artist successfully relies on nature and the resources of his own mind for his subject, and on the appreciation of collegial minds for his mode of treating it." The Times, a newspaper which had previously condemned Etty as "offensive and indecent", felt that "though defective in some respects" The Combat was "a masterly effort" that successfully fused "the florid beauties of the Venetian school" with the "sober dignity and power of the Roman school" and that compared with his previous paintings, which were "too uniformly feeble in character and meretricious in effect to entitle them to any very decided praise", the painting proved Etty "capable of maintaining a much higher station in art than we had been led to expect." An anonymous reviewer in the first issue of the short-lived The Parthenon magazine admired The Combat greatly, in particular the right foot of the female figure: > [Etty is] an artist who has hitherto appeared before the public only in a few small easel-pictures, striking indeed from their arrangement, and their approach towards the Venetian system of colour, but destitute of any particular interest. He has now come forward in a new character—as a painter in the great style of epic composition; and if his future efforts do but equal the expectations raised by his first essay, we shall have reasons to rejoice at the change. His ideal group of "The Combat", in the present exhibition at the Royal Academy, is particularly striking, from its uncommon combination of beauties, without possessing any very extraordinary merit in any single quality, taken separately. Its style of colouring, perhaps, forms its most distinguishing feature; and in this respect the artist has still adhered closely to the system pursued by the Venetian school. The arrangement of his colours is admirably successful, and we could instance individual passages of extraordinary beauty. Of these, none is more eminently deserving than the right foot of the female, which seems actually to glow with the rich juice of life. Generally speaking, the extremities are well understood, and carefully executed, and the composition of the figures is in the most masterly style. The foot in question was not universally admired by critics; the anonymous correspondent for The London Magazine, who was otherwise effusive in his praise for The Combat, felt that said foot "looks too much as if painted from a modern foot accustomed to compression in a shoe, for the heroic character and classical air of the rest of the work" and that her leg appeared too short. The painting is the subject of one of Letitia Elizabeth Landon's Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures in her 1826 collection, The Troubadour. ## Legacy Failing to sell at the Summer Exhibition, The Combat was bought from Etty by fellow artist John Martin for 300 guineas (about £ in 2023 terms), following a promise Martin had made to Etty before the painting was complete. The painting was too large for Martin's house, and in 1831 he sold it on to the Royal Scottish Academy. It was transferred in 1910 to the nearby National Gallery of Scotland where it remains. One of Etty's major works, it was exhibited at numerous major exhibitions including the seminal Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, before Etty fell out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century. Throughout his life, The Combat continued to be considered one of Etty's most powerful paintings. In 1845, Etty took a smaller 89 by 118 cm (35 by 46 in) copy of The Combat, which had been painted by an unknown Edinburgh artist, and completely reworked it to serve as the basis for an engraving by George Thomas Doo. The engraving was published three years later, and the painting used as its model passed through the hands of several collectors in subsequent years, before entering the collection of the Ringling Museum in 1934. A number of sketches attributed to Etty, under the name of A Study for Mercy Interceding for the Vanquished, are also in circulation. After the success of The Combat, Etty continued with his preferred theme of history paintings containing nudity; of the 15 pictures he exhibited at the Royal Academy during the 1820s (including Cleopatra, Pandora and The Combat) all but one contained a nude figure. He was elected a full Royal Academician in 1828, at that time the most prestigious honour available to an artist. The Combat was the first very large work attempted by Etty, and its success prompted him to produce further works on a similar scale over the rest of his career; he produced nine very large paintings illustrating moral themes throughout his career. As time went by his canvases came to be increasingly dominated by nude women. The 1832 exhibition of Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm, a painting containing apparently gratuitous nude figures, met a hostile reception from critics. From then on, while Etty continued to paint nude figures for the rest of his career, he made a conscious effort to try to illustrate moral lessons with his work. This effort was not wholly successful, and he continued to be regarded as a pornographer by some throughout his career. He died in late 1849, and following his death nude paintings went rapidly out of fashion in Britain.

Bajadasaurus

Genus of sauropod dinosaur

Bajadasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous epoch (late Berriasian to Valanginian stages, between 145 and 132.9 million years ago) of northern Patagonia, Argentina. It was first described in 2019 based on a single specimen found in 2010 that includes a largely complete skull and parts of the neck. The only species is Bajadasaurus pronuspinax. The genus is classified as a member of the Dicraeosauridae, a group of relatively small and short-necked sauropods. Bajadasaurus sported bifurcated (two-pronged), extremely elongated neural spines extending from the neck. Similarly elongated spines are known from the closely related and more completely known Amargasaurus. Several possible functions have been proposed for these spines in Amargasaurus; the 2019 description of Bajadasaurus suggested they could have served as a passive defense against predators in both genera. The skull was slender and equipped with around 48 teeth that were pencil-shaped and restricted to the front of the jaws. The eye openings of Bajadasaurus were exposed in top view, possibly allowing the animal to look forwards while feeding. Bajadasaurus was discovered in sedimentary rocks of the Bajada Colorada Formation, which were deposited by braided rivers. It shared its environment with other dinosaurs including the sauropods Leinkupal and Ninjatitan and different theropods. ## Discovery and naming The only specimen of the dinosaur genus Bajadasaurus was excavated in 2010 by palaeontologists of the CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council), the science agency of the Argentinian government. The specimen was discovered in the Bajada Colorada locality, 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of the town of Picún Leufú, near the western bank of the Limay River, in Patagonia. The site is part of the Bajada Colorada Formation, a succession of sedimentary rocks in the Neuquén Basin that is dated to the late Berriasian to Valanginian stages of the Early Cretaceous (\~145–132.9 million years ago). The specimen, of which only some teeth were initially exposed, was found by Argentinian palaeontologist Pablo Gallina. As fossils in this area are often fragile, the specimen was not excavated bone-by-bone in the field, but extracted as a single large block of rock and bone; before extraction, the block had been wrapped in plaster for protection. The block was prepared in a laboratory, revealing most of the skull as well as the first two and probably the fifth neck vertebrae. The specimen is now curated by the Museo Municipal Ernesto Bachmann in Villa El Chocón, Neuquén Province, under the specimen number MMCh-PV 75. The specimen was formally described as a new genus and species, Bajadasaurus pronuspinax, by Gallina and colleagues in 2019. The generic name is derived from the Spanish word Bajada ("downhill") in reference to the Bajada Colorada locality, and the Greek saurus ("lizard"). The specific name pronuspinax is derived from the Latin pronus ("bent over forward") and the Greek spinax ("spine"), referring to the long and forward-curved neural spines (spinous processes) of the neck. Because of the spectacular spines, the discovery of Bajadasaurus was widely reported on by international news media. In 2023, Juan Garderes and colleages published a comprehensive description of the skull based on a digital 3D reconstruction obtained from CT scans of the bones. ## Description Bajadasaurus is classified as a member of the Dicraeosauridae, a family of sauropod dinosaurs. As with all sauropods, dicraeosaurids were large, four-legged herbivores with a long neck and tail and a relatively tiny head. They were small compared to most other sauropods, reaching roughly the size of present-day Asian elephants, and their neck was comparatively short. Long bifurcated (two-pronged) neural spines were a common feature of the group, although they were only extremely elongated in Bajadasaurus and the closely related Amargasaurus. Bone fusion in the braincase and vertebral column indicates that the holotype represented an adult individual. ### Skull As in other flagellicaudatans (the group to which dicraeosaurids and diplodocids belong), the skull was elongated with an overall gracile (slender) built. The preserved skull includes the pterygoid bones of the palate, most of the skull roof and braincase, as well as the lower jaws and parts of the upper jaws. As of 2019, it is the most complete skull of a dicraeosaurid known. The middle section of the skull is not preserved. The holotype skull is affected by brittle deformation that occurred during diagenesis, which resulted in a number of fractures. In addition, the braincase is deformed plastically. All bones that surround the orbit (eye socket) are preserved, except for the jugal bone, which would have formed the lower margin of the opening. The lacrimal bone, which formed the front margin of the orbit, had a straight ridge on its upper half that was similar to that of Dicraeosaurus. It was pierced by a small foramen (opening), similar to the larger foramen seen in Dicraeosaurus. The upper-front corner of the orbit was formed by the prefrontal bone. The contribution of the prefrontal to the orbit was smaller than in Dicraeosaurus and Amargasaurus; the bone was also smaller and less robust than in these genera. The upper rim of the orbit was formed by the frontal, which was fused to the parietal bone behind; together, these bones formed most of the rear part of the skull roof. Viewed from above, the side margin of the frontal was S-shaped and narrowed from back to front. As a result, the eye openings were visible in top view of the skull, unlike in related genera except Lingwulong. At the back, the frontal also formed a small part of the supratemporal fenestra, a major opening on the rear part of the skull roof. The rear margin of the orbit was formed by the postorbital bone. Typically in dinosaurs, this bone featured a rearwards extending process, the posterior process. In Bajadasaurus, Dicraeosaurus, and Amargasaurus, this process was reduced and indistinct. The downward projecting process of the squamosal, a bone forming the upper rear corner of the skull, was elongated, distinguishing the genus from other dicraeosaurids. This suggests that it was connected to the quadratojugal bone at the lower rear edge of the skull, although the articulation itself is not preserved. This probable articulation was absent in diplodocids, and has not previously been documented in dicraeosaurids. Below the orbit and framed by the squamosal, postorbital, quadratojugal, and jugal was the lateral temporal fenestra, another major skull opening. In Bajadasaurus, this opening was narrow and obliquely oriented. The quadratojugal formed an obtuse angle that framed the lower rear part of the lateral temporal fenestra, different from the feature seen in diplodocids. The quadrate, a column-like bone forming parts of the rear of the skull, showed an expanded ventral surface (underside) as well as a squamosal process that was elongated but not expanded at its end; both features are considered as potential autapomorphies of Bajadasaurus. The braincase is mostly hidden from view by overlying bones; only the occipital region (rear part) is exposed. The uppermost bone of the occipital region is the supraoccipital, which in Bajadasaurus was completely fused to the exoccipital-opisthotic bone below and featured a distinct and narrow longitudinal ridge, the sagittal nuchal crest. The posttemporal fenestrae, a pair of openings between the parietal and the occipital region, were extended medially (towards the mid-plane of the skull), which is an autapomorphy of Bajadasaurus (a unique feature not found in closely related genera). The occipital condyle, which articulated with the first vertebra of the neck, was wider than it was high. Its rear surface was not wider than its neck, which was different from Amargasaurus and Dicraeosaurus. The basisphenoid, which formed part of the underside of the braincase, had a pair of gracile bony extensions, the basipterygoid processes, which extended forwards and downwards to articulate with the pterygoid of the palate, bracing the braincase against the latter. An autapomorphy of the genus, these processes were longer and more slender than in Dicraeosaurus and Amargasaurus, being more than six times long than wide. The left and right pterygoids, the only elements of the palate that were preserved, featured a smooth crest that received the basipterygoid processes. The lower jaw was ca. 80% the length of the skull, which is similar to the proportions seen in diplodocids, but potentially questions previous reconstructions of other dicraeosaurids that assume a proportionally shorter lower jaw. The teeth were restricted to the front parts of the jaws, were pencil-shaped and tilted forwards; their narrow crowns were nearly straight or curved slightly inwards. Of the upper jaw, only the front section of the left maxilla (the largest bone of the upper jaw) is preserved. It preserves eight alveoli (tooth sockets), a count similar to Suuwassea, but less than in Dicraeosaurus, which had 12 teeth in each maxilla. A seemingly complete tooth row of 24 teeth was found close to, but separated from, the left maxilla. This count corresponds to the tooth count of the lower jaw, where the teeth are still anchored within the left and right dentaries (the only tooth-bearing bones of the lower jaw). Bajadasaurus thus likely had 48 teeth in total. The dentary was slender, similar to Suuwassea but unlike the deep dentary of Dicraeosaurus. In top view, the dentaries do not form the box-shaped snout seen in diplodocids, but are more rounded with a J-shaped curvature, as is typical for dicraeosaurids. The front of the dentary had a hook-like "chin" projecting downwards, as seen in other flagellicaudatans. In the hind part of the lower jaw, the angular bone was very elongated and longer than the surangular bone, unlike in diplodocids. ### Neck vertebrae Both proatlases—small, triangular bones located between the first neck vertebra and the skull—were found in articulation with the skull. Of the first neck vertebra (the atlas), only the upper elements, the atlantal neurapophyses, are preserved. These were triangular and wing-like in Bajadasaurus. The second neck vertebra, the axis, is nearly complete. As in Dicraeosaurus, it was twice as high as it was long, while its centrum (or vertebral body) was twice as long as it was high. The diapophyses (sidewards projecting processes) were small and directed backwards as in Suuwassea rather than downwards as in Dicraeosaurus and Amargasaurus. The neural spine of the axis was narrow and not bifurcated; it differed from other sauropods in being vertically oriented (an autapomorphy of the genus), triangular in cross-section, and tapering towards its apex. Only a single vertebra is known from the remainder of the neck. This vertebra sported the most prominent feature of the genus, an extremely elongated neural spine that was deeply bifurcated into a left and right rod-like element. This neural spine is 58 cm (1 ft 11 in) long and made the vertebra four times taller than it was long. Among sauropods, it was only comparable to those of the related Amargasaurus, but the spine curved toward the front rather than being directed backwards as in that genus. The bases of the rod-like elements were triangular and compressed sideways; their cross-section along most of their length was egg-shaped. Their tips broadened slightly, unlike the acute tips in Amargasaurus. In Amargasaurus, the spines show striations on their surface that indicate that a keratin (horn) sheath was present in life. Although similar striations cannot be observed on the spines of Bajadasaurus due to poor preservation, Gallina and colleagues found it likely that the spines were covered by a horny sheath as well. The exact position of the single preserved vertebra in the neck is unclear: its morphology is comparable to the fifth neck vertebra of Dicraeosaurus, the probable sixth of Brachytrachelopan, and the seventh of Amargasaurus; based on these comparisons, it was tentatively described as the fifth neck vertebra. The centrum of this vertebra was twice as long as it was high and narrowed into a longitudinal keel on the underside; this keel was concave and broader in other dicraeosaurids. ## Classification Dicraeosaurids are one of the three principal families comprising the Diplodocoidea, a major subdivision of sauropod dinosaurs. Within Diplodocoidea, dicraeosaurids form the sister group of the Diplodocidae, while the third family, the Rebbachisauridae, is more distantly related. Dicraeosaurids and diplodocids are united within the group Flagellicaudata, which is named after the whip-like tails characteristic of the group. The number of genera classified within Dicraeosauridae varies between studies. Gallina and colleagues, in their 2019 description of Bajadasaurus, recognised seven additional genera. The earliest is Lingwulong from the late Early to early Middle Jurassic of China, while three genera are known from the Late Jurassic—Brachytrachelopan from Argentina; Suuwassea from the United States; and the eponymous Dicraeosaurus from Tanzania. Early Cretaceous dicraeosaurids include Bajadasaurus as well as Amargatitanis, Pilmatueia, and Amargasaurus, all from Argentina. In their analysis of evolutionary relationships, Gallina and colleagues recovered Bajadasaurus as an intermediate member of Dicraeosauridae, more derived (more recently diverging from a common ancestor) than Suuwassea and Lingwulong, but less so than Pilmatueia, Amargasaurus, Dicraeosaurus, and Brachytrachelopan. The referral of Bajadasaurus to the Dicraeosauridae was supported by six synapomorphies (anatomical features distinguishing the group from related taxa). A subsequent analysis by John Whitlock and Jeffrey Wilson Mantilla, in 2020, found Bajadasaurus to be the most basal member of a clade that also contains Lingwulong and the unnamed North American taxon MOR 592. In this analysis, Bajadasaurus therefore occupies a slightly more basal position within Dicraeosauridae than indicated by Gallina and colleagues. As well as the genera recognised by the latter study, Whitlock and Wilson Mantilla found Kaatedocus and Smitanosaurus to be basal members of Dicraeosauridae. A 2022 study led by Guillermo Windholz analyzed multiple datasets and found conflicting results, with one of their analyses finding Bajadasaurus to be most closely related to Amargatitanis and Pilmatueia in a clade of South American dicraeosaurids. They argued that, despite the inconsistent results of their phylogenetic analyses, it would be reasonable to expect South American dicraeosaurids to group together on biogeographic grounds. Bajadasaurus itself can be differentiated from other dicraeosaurids by a unique combination of features, which includes four autapomorphies (a medially extended posttemporal fenestra; slender and long basipterygoid processes; vertically oriented neural spines of the second neck vertebra; and elongated, forward-curved neural spines in the neck). Cladogram by Gallina and colleagues (2019) Cladogram by Whitlock and colleagues (2020) Cladogram by Windholz and colleagues (2022) showing their favored result of a clade of South American dicraeosaurids ## Palaeobiology ### Function of neural spines Elongated and deeply bifurcated neural spines were common in dicraeosaurids. In Dicraeosaurus and Brachytrachelopan, they were inclined toward the front but remained much shorter than in Bajadasaurus. Only the spines of Amargasaurus were similarly elongated. The spines of Amargasaurus led to much speculation about their possible life appearance and function. As hypothesised by separate authors, they could have supported a sail or horny sheaths, and could have been used for display, defense, or thermoregulation. Daniela Schwarz and colleagues, in 2007, found that the double-row formed by the bifurcated neural spines along the spine of dicraeosaurids would have enclosed an air sac, the so-called supravertebral diverticulum, that would have been connected to the lungs as part of the respiratory system. In Dicraeosaurus, this air sac would have occupied the entire space between the left and right parts of the spines, while it would have been restricted to the lower third of the spines in Amargasaurus. The upper two thirds would likely have been covered by a horny sheath, as is indicated by longitudinal striations on their surface. Gallina and colleagues, in 2019, considered this the most reasonable interpretation that may likewise be applied to Bajadasaurus. These researchers further argued that horn is more resistant to impact-related fractures than bone, and that a horny sheath would therefore have protected the delicate spines from damage. Fracturing of the spines might have been a critical threat, as the bases of the spines roofed the spinal cord. The protection of the sheath would have been further enhanced if it would have extended past its bony core. Schwarz and colleagues reconstructed Amargasaurus with horny sheaths that did not reach far beyond their bony core, as is the case for most modern reptiles. In some modern even-toed ungulates, the horny sheath can be double the length of the horn core, and the exquisitely preserved ankylosaur Borealopelta was found with horny sheaths that extended the length of its spines by 25%, demonstrating that substantial horny extensions may occur in dinosaurs as well. Gallina and colleagues speculated that the spines of Amargasaurus and Bajadasaurus might have been more than 50% longer than indicated by their bony core. Their bending would have further increased their resistance, as is the case in modern bighorn sheep. Gallina and colleagues further speculated that the spines in both Amargasaurus and Bajadasaurus might have been used for defense. Due to its forward bend, the bifurcated neural spine of the supposed fifth neck vertebra would have reached past the head, and could therefore have been a barrier to predators. Similar, even larger spikes were postulated for the following neck vertebrae. Moderate damage would result in the break-off of the horny tips, leaving the bony spine intact. Amargasaurus lived around 15 million years later than Bajadasaurus, indicating that elongated neural spines were a long-lasting defense strategy. In 2022, a detailed study was published by Cerda et al. It analyzed the external morphology, internal microanatomy and bone microstructure of the hemispinous processes for the first time from the holotype of Amargasaurus and an indeterminate dicraeosaurid. Proximal, mid and distal portions of both cervical and dorsal hemispinous processes reveal that the cortical bone is formed by highly vascularized fibrolamellar bone interrupted with cyclical growth marks. Both anatomical and histological evidence does not support the presence of a keratinized sheath (i.e. horn) covering the hyperelongated hemispinous processes of Amargasaurus, and either, using a parsimonious criterion, in other dicraeosaurids with similar vertebral morphology. Osteohistology of the spines suggests that they were likely, if not exclusively, covered in a sail of skin. The spines are also highly vascularized and bear cyclical growth marks, adding credence to this theory. This could have applied to the structures possessed by Bajadasaurus as well. ### Senses and feeding The orientation of the semicircular canals, ring-like structures in the inner ear that house the sense of balance, have been used to reconstruct habitual head postures in some dinosaurs and other extinct animals, although the reliability of this method has been repeatedly questioned. Palaeontologist Paulina Carabajal Carballido, in 2015, inferred that Amargasaurus would have had its snout facing downwards. Assuming a similar head orientation in Bajadasaurus, Gallina and colleagues hypothesised that the exposure of the eye openings in top view might have allowed the animal to look forward while feeding, while the sight of most other sauropods was limited to the sides. These researchers further speculated that this feature could have allowed for stereoscopic vision. Such stereoscopic vision would only have come into effect when the snout was downturned. In a 2019 conference abstract reporting ongoing research, Garderes and colleagues estimated how frequently teeth were shed and replaced (tooth replacement rate) as well as the time required for teeth to form (tooth formation time) in Bajadasaurus. Such information can be derived by counting and measuring daily growth lines seen in cross-sections of teeth, and may help to reconstruct feeding habits in extinct animals where direct observation is not possible. Garderes and colleagues estimated that teeth were replaced at an average of 35.75 days in the maxilla, and that formation time was between 158 and 96 days in the maxilla, 176 and 144 days in the premaxilla, and between 138 and 77 days in the dentary. These values are similar to those found in other diplodocoids. In 2023, Garderes and colleagues suggested that Bajadasaurus might have had a beak-like structure supporting the tooth-bearing portions of the muzzle. As beaks are made out of keratin, which rarely fossilises, their presence can only be indirectly inferred. In Bajadasaurus, such indirect evidence includes, amongst other features, a step in the side surface of the maxilla, which is often present in beaked animals. A beak could have reduced stress on the jaws during feeding and provided an additional cutting edge. However, definitive evidence for the presence of a beak-like structure is missing, and future research is needed to confirm its assumed functional advantages. ## Paleoenvironment Bajadasaurus was recovered from the Bajada Colorada Formation, a geological formation of the Mendoza Group that is exposed in northern Patagonia. The formation is composed of red and green-brown sandstones and conglomerates of fine to coarse grain size together with bands of reddish claystones and light brown siltstones. These sediments were mostly deposited by braided rivers, as is evident by well-preserved river channels with cross bedding. Paleosols are present in the formation. The Bajada Colorada Formation overlies the Quintuco and Picún Leufú Formations. At its top, it is separated from the overlying Agrio Formation by an unconformity (sedimentation hiatus). Bajadasaurus stems from the Bajada Colorada locality, the type locality of the formation. Besides Bajadasaurus, the locality has yielded the remains of other sauropods, including the diplodocid Leinkupal laticauda and the early titanosaur Ninjatitan zapatai, as well as those of several species of theropod that can be ascribed to basal Tetanurae and possibly to abelisauroids and deinonychosaurians.

Ronald Reagan

President of the United States from 1981 to 1989

Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/ RAY-gən; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he was considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in the United States. Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and began to work as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. In 1937, Reagan moved to California, where he became a well-known film actor. From 1947 to 1952, Reagan served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. In the 1950s, he worked in television and spoke for General Electric. From 1959 to 1960, he again served as the Screen Actors Guild's president. In 1964, "A Time for Choosing" gave Reagan attention as a new conservative figure. He was elected governor of California in 1966. During his governorship, he raised taxes, turned the state budget deficit into a surplus, and cracked down harshly on university protests. After challenging and nearly defeating incumbent president Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries, Reagan won the Republican nomination and then a landslide victory over incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in the 1980 United States presidential election. In his first term, Reagan implemented "Reaganomics", which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. He escalated an arms race and transitioned Cold War policy away from détente with the Soviet Union; he also ordered the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Additionally, he survived an assassination attempt, fought public sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic in the United States, which began early in his presidency. In the 1984 presidential election, Reagan defeated former vice president Walter Mondale in another landslide victory. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and a more conciliatory approach in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Reagan left the presidency in 1989 with the American economy having seen a significant reduction of inflation, the unemployment rate having fallen, and the United States having entered its then-longest peacetime expansion. At the same time, the federal debt had nearly tripled since 1981 as a result of his cuts in taxes and increased military spending, despite cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Reagan's policies also helped contribute to the end of the Cold War and the end of Soviet communism. Alzheimer's disease hindered Reagan post-presidency, and his physical and mental capacities rapidly deteriorated, ultimately leading to his death in 2004. Historians and scholars have typically ranked Reagan among the upper to middle tier of American presidents, and his post-presidential approval ratings by the general public are usually high. ## Early life Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in a commercial building in Tampico, Illinois, as the younger son of Nelle Clyde Wilson and Jack Reagan. Nelle was committed to the Disciples of Christ, which believed in the Social Gospel. She led prayer meetings and ran mid-week prayers at her church when the pastor was out of town. Reagan credited her spiritual influence and he became a Christian. According to Stephen Vaughn, Reagan's values came from his pastor, and the First Christian Church's religious, economic and social positions "coincided with the words, if not the beliefs of the latter-day Reagan". Jack focused on making money to take care of the family, but this was complicated by his alcoholism. Neil Reagan was Reagan's older brother. Together, they lived in Chicago, Galesburg, and Monmouth before returning to Tampico. In 1920, they settled in Dixon, Illinois, living in a house near the H. C. Pitney Variety Store Building. Reagan attended Dixon High School, where he developed interests in drama and football. His first job involved working as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park. In 1928, Reagan began attending Eureka College at Nelle's approval on religious grounds. He was a mediocre student that participated in sports, drama, and campus politics. He became student body president and joined a student strike that resulted in the college president's resignation. Reagan played at the guard position for the 1930 and 1931 Eureka Red Devils football teams and recalled a time when two black football teammates were refused service at a segregated hotel; he invited them to his parents' home nearby in Dixon and his parents welcomed them. At the time, his parents' stance on racial questions were unusually progressive in Dixon. Reagan himself had grown up with very few black Americans there and was unaware of a race problem. ## Entertainment career ### Radio and film After obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology from Eureka College in 1932, Reagan took a job in Davenport, Iowa, as a sports broadcaster for four football games in the Big Ten Conference. He then worked for WHO radio in Des Moines as a broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs. His specialty was creating play-by-play accounts of games using only basic descriptions that the station received by wire as the games were in progress. Simultaneously, he often expressed his opposition to racism. In 1936, while traveling with the Cubs to their spring training in California, Reagan took a screen test that led to a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. Reagan arrived at Hollywood in 1937, debuting in Love Is on the Air (1937). Using a simple and direct approach to acting and following his directors' instructions, Reagan made thirty films, mostly B films, before beginning military service in April 1942. He broke out of these types of films by portraying George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), which would be rejuvenated when reporters called Reagan "the Gipper" while he campaigned for president of the United States. Afterward, Reagan starred in Kings Row (1942) as a leg amputee, asking, "Where's the rest of me?" His performance was considered his best by many critics. Reagan became a star, with Gallup polls placing him "in the top 100 stars" from 1941 to 1942. World War II interrupted the movie stardom that Reagan would never be able to achieve again as Warner Bros. became uncertain about his ability to generate ticket sales. Reagan, who had a limited acting range, was dissatisfied with the roles he received. As a result, Lew Wasserman renegotiated his contract with his studio, allowing him to also make films with Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and RKO Pictures as a freelancer. With this, Reagan appeared in multiple western films, something that had been denied him working at Warner Bros. In 1952, he ended his relationship with Warner Bros., but went on to appear in a total of 53 films, his last being The Killers (1964). ### Military service In April 1937, Reagan enlisted in the United States Army Reserve. He was assigned as a private in Des Moines' 322nd Cavalry Regiment and reassigned to second lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps. He later became a part of the 323rd Cavalry Regiment in California. As relations between the United States and Japan worsened, Reagan was ordered for active duty while he was filming Kings Row. Wasserman and Warner Bros. lawyers successfully sent draft deferments to complete the film in October 1941. However, to avoid accusations of Reagan being a draft dodger, the studio let him go in April 1942. Reagan reported for duty with severe near-sightedness. His first assignment was at Fort Mason as a liaison officer, a role that allowed him to transfer to the United States Army Air Forces (AAF). Reagan became an AAF public relations officer and was subsequently assigned to the 18th AAF Base Unit in Culver City where he felt that it was "impossible to remove an incompetent or lazy worker" due to what he felt was "the incompetence, the delays, and inefficiencies" of the federal bureaucracy. Despite this, Reagan participated in the Provisional Task Force Show Unit in Burbank and continued to make theatrical films. He was also ordered to temporary duty in New York City to participate in the sixth War Loan Drive before being reassigned to Fort MacArthur until his discharge on December 9, 1945, as a captain. Throughout his military service, Reagan produced over 400 training films. ### Screen Actors Guild presidency When Robert Montgomery resigned as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) on March 10, 1947, Reagan was elected to that position, in a special election. Reagan's first tenure saw various labor-management disputes, the Hollywood blacklist, and the Taft–Hartley Act's implementation. On April 10, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed Reagan and he provided them with the names of actors whom he believed to be communist sympathizers. During a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing, Reagan testified that some guild members were associated with the Communist Party and that he was well-informed on a "jurisdictional strike". When asked if he was aware of communist efforts within the Screen Writers Guild, he called the efforts "hearsay". Reagan would remain SAG president until he resigned on November 10, 1952; Walter Pidgeon succeeded him, but Reagan stayed on the board. The SAG fought with film producers over residual payments and on November 16, 1959, the board installed Reagan as SAG president, replacing the resigned Howard Keel. In his second stint, Reagan managed to secure the payments for actors whose theatrical films were released from 1948 to 1959 and subsequently televised. The producers were initially required to pay the actors fees, but they ultimately settled for pensions instead. However, they were still required to pay residuals for films after 1959. Reagan resigned from the SAG presidency on June 7, 1960, and also left the board; George Chandler succeeded him as SAG president. ### Marriages and children Reagan married Brother Rat (1938) co-star Jane Wyman in January 1940. Together, they had two biological daughters: Maureen in 1941, and Christine, born prematurely and dead the next day in 1947. They adopted one son, Michael, in 1945. Wyman filed to divorce Reagan in June 1948. She was uninterested in politics, and occasionally recriminated, reconciled and separated with him. Although Reagan was unprepared, the divorce was finalized in July 1949. Reagan would also remain close to his children. Later that year, Reagan met Nancy Davis after she contacted him in his capacity as the SAG president about her name appearing on a communist blacklist in Hollywood; she had been mistaken for another Nancy Davis. They married in March 1952 and had two children, Patti in 1952, and Ron in 1958. ### Television Reagan became the host of MCA Inc. television production General Electric Theater at Wasserman's recommendation. It featured multiple guest stars, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan, continuing to use her stage name Nancy Davis, acted together in three episodes. When asked how Reagan was able to recruit such stars to appear on the show during television's infancy, he replied, "Good stories, top direction, production quality." However, the viewership declined in the 1960s and the show was canceled in 1962. In 1965, Reagan became the host of another MCA production, Death Valley Days. ## Early political activities Reagan began as a Democrat, viewing Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a true hero". He joined the American Veterans Committee and Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP), worked with the AFL–CIO to fight right-to-work laws, and continued to speak out against racism when he was in Hollywood. In 1945, Reagan planned to lead an HICCASP anti-nuclear rally, but Warner Bros. prevented him from going. In 1946, he appeared in a radio program called Operation Terror to speak out against rising Ku Klux Klan activity in the country, citing the attacks as a "capably organized systematic campaign of fascist violence and intimidation and horror". Reagan also supported Harry S. Truman in the 1948 presidential election and Helen Gahagan Douglas for the United States Senate in 1950. It was Reagan's belief that communism was a powerful backstage influence in Hollywood that led him to rally his friends against them. Reagan began shifting to the right when he supported the presidential campaigns of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and Richard Nixon in 1960. When Reagan was contracted by General Electric (GE), he gave speeches to their employees. His speeches had a positive take on free markets. Under GE vice president Lemuel Boulware, a staunch anti-communist, employees were encouraged to vote for business-friendly politicians. In 1961, Reagan adapted his speeches into another speech to criticize Medicare. In his view, its legislation would have meant "the end of individual freedom in the United States". In 1962, Reagan was dropped by GE, and he formally registered as a Republican. In 1964, Reagan gave a speech for presidential contender Barry Goldwater that was eventually referred to as "A Time for Choosing". Reagan argued that the Founding Fathers "knew that governments don't control things. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose" and that "We've been told increasingly that we must choose between left or right." Even though the speech was not enough to turn around the faltering Goldwater campaign, it increased Reagan's profile among conservatives. David S. Broder and Stephen H. Hess called it "the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his famous 'Cross of Gold' address". ### 1966 California gubernatorial election In January 1966, Reagan announced his candidacy for the California governorship, repeating his stances on individual freedom and big government. When he met with black Republicans in March, he was criticized for opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Certain in his own lack of prejudice, Reagan responded resentfully that bigotry was not in his nature and later argued that certain provisions of the act infringed upon the rights of property owners. After the Supreme Court of California ruled that the initiative that repealed the Rumford Act was unconstitutional in May, he voiced his support for the act's repeal, but later preferred amending it. In the Republican primary, Reagan defeated George Christopher, a moderate who William F. Buckley Jr. thought had painted Reagan as extreme. Reagan's general election opponent, incumbent governor Pat Brown, attempted to label Reagan as an extremist and tout his own accomplishments. Reagan portrayed himself as a political outsider, and charged Brown as responsible for the Watts riots and lenient on crime. In numerous speeches, Reagan "hit the Brown administration about high taxes, uncontrolled spending, the radicals at the University of California, Berkeley, and the need for accountability in government". Meanwhile, many in the press perceived Reagan as "monumentally ignorant of state issues", though Lou Cannon said that Reagan benefited from an appearance he and Brown made on Meet the Press in September. Ultimately, Reagan won the governorship with 57 percent of the vote compared to Brown's 42 percent. ## 1967–1975: California governorship Brown had spent much of California's funds on new programs, prompting them to use accrual accounting to avoid raising taxes. Consequently, it generated a larger deficit, and Reagan would call for reduced government spending and tax hikes to balance the budget. He worked with Jesse M. Unruh on securing tax increases and promising future property tax cuts. This caused some conservatives to accuse Reagan of betraying his principles. As a result, taxes on sales, banks, corporate profits, inheritances, liquor, and cigarettes jumped. Kevin Starr states, Reagan "gave Californians the biggest tax hike in their history—and got away with it." In the 1970 gubernatorial election, Unruh used Reagan's tax policy against him, saying it disproportionally favored the wealthy. Reagan countered that he was still committed to reducing property taxes. By 1973, the budget had a surplus, which Reagan preferred "to give back to the people". In 1967, Reagan reacted to the Black Panther Party's strategy of copwatching by signing the Mulford Act to prohibit the public carrying of firearms. The act was California's most restrictive piece of gun control legislation, with critics saying that it was "overreacting to the political activism of organizations such as the Black Panthers". The act marked the beginning of both modern legislation and public attitude studies on gun control. Reagan also signed the 1967 Therapeutic Abortion Act that allowed abortions in the cases of rape and incest when a doctor determined the birth would impair the physical or mental health of the mother. He later expressed regret over signing it, saying that he was unaware of the mental health provision. He believed that doctors were interpreting the provision loosely and more abortions were resulting. After Reagan won the 1966 election, he and his advisors planned a run in the 1968 Republican presidential primaries. He ran as an unofficial candidate to cut into Nixon's southern support and be a compromise candidate if there were to be a brokered convention. He won California's delegates, but Nixon secured enough delegates for the nomination. Reagan had previously been critical of former governor Brown and university administrators for tolerating student demonstrations in the city of Berkeley, making it a major theme in his campaigning. On February 5, 1969, Reagan declared a state of emergency in response to ongoing protests and acts of violence at the University of California, Berkeley, and sent in the California Highway Patrol. In May 1969, these officers, along with local officers from Berkeley and Alameda county, clashed with protestors over a site known as the People's Park. One student was shot and killed while many police officers and two reporters were injured. Reagan then commanded the state National Guard troops to occupy Berkeley for seventeen days to subdue the protesters, allowing other students to attend class safely. In February 1970, violent protests broke out near the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he once again deployed the National Guard. On April 7, Reagan defended his policies regarding campus protests, saying, "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement." During his victorious reelection campaign in 1970, Reagan, remaining critical of government, promised to prioritize welfare reform. He was concerned that the programs were disincentivizing work and that the growing welfare rolls would lead to both an unbalanced budget and another big tax hike in 1972. At the same time, the Federal Reserve increased interest rates to combat inflation, putting the American economy in a mild recession. Reagan worked with Bob Moretti to tighten up the eligibility requirements so that the financially needy could continue receiving payments. This was only accomplished after Reagan softened his criticism of Nixon's Family Assistance Plan. Nixon then lifted regulations to shepherd California's experiment. In 1976, the Employment Development Department published a report suggesting that the experiment that ran from 1971 to 1974 was unsuccessful. Reagan did not run for the governorship in 1974 and it was won by Pat Brown's son, Jerry. Reagan's governorship, as professor Gary K. Clabaugh writes, saw public schools deteriorate due to his opposition to additional basic education funding. As for higher education, journalist William Trombley believed that the budget cuts Reagan enacted damaged Berkeley's student-faculty ratio and research. Additionally, the homicide rate doubled and armed robbery rates rose as well during Reagan's eight years, even with the many laws Reagan signed to try toughening criminal sentencing and reforming the criminal justice system. Reagan strongly supported capital punishment, but his efforts to enforce it were thwarted by People v. Anderson in 1972. According to his son, Michael, Reagan said that he regretted signing the Family Law Act that granted no-fault divorces. ## 1975–1981: Seeking the presidency ### 1976 Republican primaries Insufficiently conservative to Reagan and many other Republicans, president Gerald Ford suffered from multiple political and economic woes. Ford, running for president, was disappointed to hear him also run. Reagan was strongly critical of détente and Ford's policy of détente with the Soviet Union. He repeated "A Time for Choosing" around the country before announcing his campaign on November 20, 1975, when he discussed economic and social problems, and to a lesser extent, foreign affairs. Both candidates were determined to knock each other out early in the primaries, but Reagan would devastatingly lose the first five primaries beginning with New Hampshire, where he popularized the welfare queen narrative about Linda Taylor, exaggerating her misuse of welfare benefits and igniting voter resentment for welfare reform, but never overtly mentioning her name or race. In Florida, Reagan referred to a "strapping young buck", which became an example of dog whistle politics, and accused Ford for handing the Panama Canal to Panama's government while Ford implied that he would end Social Security. Then, in Illinois, he again criticized Ford's policy and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger. Losing the first five primaries prompted Reagan to desperately win North Carolina's by running a grassroots campaign and uniting with the Jesse Helms political machine that viciously attacked Ford. Reagan won an upset victory, convincing party delegates that Ford's nomination was no longer guaranteed. Reagan won subsequent victories in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Indiana with his attacks on social programs, opposition to forced busing, increased support from inclined voters of a declining George Wallace presidential campaign, and repeated criticisms of Ford and Kissinger's policies, including détente. The result was a seesaw battle for the 1,130 delegates required for their party's nomination that neither would reach before the Kansas City convention in August and Ford replacing mentions of détente with Reagan's preferred phrase, "peace through strength". Reagan took John Sears' advice of choosing liberal Richard Schweiker as his running mate, hoping to pry loose of delegates from Pennsylvania and other states, and distract Ford. Instead, conservatives were left alienated, and Ford picked up the remaining uncommitted delegates and prevailed, earning 1,187 to Reagan's 1,070. Before giving his acceptance speech, Ford invited Reagan to address the convention; Reagan emphasized individual freedom and the dangers of nuclear weapons. In 1977, Ford told Cannon that Reagan's primary challenge contributed to his own narrow loss to Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 United States presidential election. ### 1980 election Reagan emerged as a vocal critic of President Carter in 1977. The Panama Canal Treaty's signing, the 1979 oil crisis, and rise in the inflation, interest and unemployment rates helped set up his 1980 presidential campaign, which he announced on November 13, 1979 with an indictment of the federal government. His announcement stressed his fundamental principles of tax cuts to stimulate the economy and having both a small government and a strong national defense, since he believed the United States was behind the Soviet Union militarily. Heading into 1980, his age became an issue among the press, and the United States was in a severe recession. In the primaries, Reagan unexpectedly lost the Iowa caucus to George H. W. Bush. Three days before the New Hampshire primary, the Reagan and Bush campaigns agreed to a one-on-one debate sponsored by The Telegraph at Nashua, New Hampshire, but hours before the debate, the Reagan campaign invited other candidates including Bob Dole, John B. Anderson, Howard Baker and Phil Crane. Debate moderator Jon Breen denied seats to the other candidates, asserting that The Telegraph would violate federal campaign contribution laws if it sponsored the debate and changed the ground rules hours before the debate. As a result, the Reagan campaign agreed to pay for the debate. Reagan said that as he was funding the debate, he could decide who would debate. During the debate, when Breen was laying out the ground rules and attempting to ask the first question, Reagan interrupted in protest to make an introductory statement and wanted other candidates to be included before the debate began. The moderator asked Bob Malloy, the volume operator, to mute Reagan's microphone. After Malloy repeated his demand to Malloy, Reagan furiously replied, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green! [sic]". This turned out to be the turning point of the debate and the primary race. Ultimately, the four additional candidates left, and the debate continued between Reagan and Bush. Reagan's polling numbers improved, and he won the New Hampshire primary by more than 39,000 votes. Soon thereafter, Reagan's opponents began dropping out of the primaries, including Anderson, who left the party to become an independent candidate. Reagan easily captured the presidential nomination and chose Bush as his running mate at the Detroit convention in July. The general election pitted Reagan against Carter amid the multitude of domestic concerns and ongoing Iran hostage crisis that began on November 4, 1979. Reagan's campaign worried that Carter would be able to secure the release of the American hostages in Iran as part of the October surprise, Carter "suggested that Reagan would wreck Social Security" and portrayed him as a warmonger, and Anderson carried support from liberal Republicans dissatisfied with Reagan's conservatism. One of Reagan's key strengths was his appeal to the rising conservative movement. Though most conservative leaders espoused cutting taxes and budget deficits, many conservatives focused more closely on social issues like abortion and homosexuality. Evangelical Protestants became an increasingly important voting bloc, and they generally supported Reagan. Reagan also won the backing of Reagan Democrats. Though he advocated socially conservative view points, Reagan focused much of his campaign on attacks against Carter's foreign policy. In August, Reagan gave a speech at the Neshoba County Fair, stating his belief in states' rights. Joseph Crespino argues that the visit was designed to reach out to Wallace-inclined voters, and some also saw these actions as an extension of the Southern strategy to garner white support for Republican candidates. Reagan's supporters have said that this was his typical anti-big government rhetoric, without racial context or intent. In the October 28 debate, Carter chided Reagan for being against national health insurance. Reagan replied, "There you go again", though the audience laughed and viewers found him more appealing. Reagan later asked the audience if they were better off than they were four years ago, slightly paraphrasing Roosevelt's words in 1934. In 1983, Reagan's campaign managers were revealed to having obtained Carter's debate briefing book before the debates. On November 4, 1980, Reagan won in a decisive victory in the Electoral College over Carter, carrying 44 states and receiving 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49 in six states and the District of Columbia. He won the popular vote by a narrower margin, receiving nearly 51 percent to Carter's 41 percent and Anderson's 7 percent. In the United States Congress, Republicans won a majority of seats in the Senate for the first time since 1952 while Democrats retained the House of Representatives. ## 1981–1989: Presidency ### First inauguration The 40th president of the United States, Reagan was sworn into office for his first term on January 20, 1981. In his , he addressed the country's economic malaise, arguing, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." In a final insult to President Carter, Iran had waited until Reagan had been sworn in before sending the hostages home. ### "Reaganomics" and the economy Reagan advocated a laissez-faire philosophy, and promoted a set of neoliberal reforms dubbed "Reaganomics", which included monetarism and supply-side economics. #### Taxation Reagan worked with the boll weevil Democrats to pass tax and budget legislation in a Congress led by Tip O'Neill, a liberal who strongly criticized Reaganomics. He lifted federal oil and gasoline price controls on January 28, 1981, and in August, he signed the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 to dramatically lower federal income tax rates and require exemptions and brackets to be indexed for inflation starting in 1985. Amid growing concerns about the mounting federal debt, Reagan signed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, one of the eleven times Reagan raised taxes. The bill doubled the federal cigarette tax, rescinded a portion of the corporate tax cuts from the 1981 tax bill, and according to Paul Krugman, "a third of the 1981 cut" overall. Many of his supporters condemned the bill, but Reagan defended his preservation of cuts on individual income tax rates. By 1983, the amount of federal tax had fallen for all or most taxpayers, but most strongly affected the wealthy. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced the number of tax brackets and top tax rate, and almost doubled personal exemptions. To Reagan, the tax cuts would not have increased the deficit as long as there was enough economic growth and spending cuts. His policies proposed that economic growth would occur when the tax cuts spur investments, which would result in more spending, consumption, and ergo tax revenue. This theoretical relationship has been illustrated by some with the controversial Laffer curve. Critics labeled this "trickle-down economics", the belief that tax policies that benefit the wealthy will spread to the poor. Milton Friedman and Robert Mundell argued that these policies invigorated America's economy and contributed to the economic boom of the 1990s. #### Inflation and unemployment Reagan took office in the midst of stagflation. The economy briefly experienced growth before plunging into a recession in July 1981. As Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker fought inflation by pursuing a tight money policy of high interest rates, which restricted lending and investment, raised unemployment, and temporarily reduced economic growth. In December 1982, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) measured the unemployment rate at 10.8 percent. Around the same time, economic activity began to rise until its end in 1990, setting the record for the longest peacetime expansion. In 1983, the recession ended and Reagan nominated Volcker to a second term in fear of damaging confidence in the economic recovery. Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan to succeed Volcker in 1987. Greenspan raised interest rates in another attempt to curb inflation, setting off the Black Monday although the markets eventually recovered. By 1989, the BLS measured the unemployment rate at 5.3 percent. The inflation rate dropped from 12 percent during the 1980 election to under 5 percent in 1989. Likewise, the interest rate dropped from 15 percent to under 10 percent. Yet, not all shared equally in the economic recovery, and both economic inequality and the number of homeless individuals increased during the 1980s. Critics have contended that a majority of the jobs created during this decade paid the minimum wage. #### Government spending In 1981, in an effort to keep it solvent, Reagan approved a plan for cuts to Social Security. He later backed off of these plans due to public backlash. He then created the Greenspan Commission to keep Social Security financially secure and in 1983, he signed amendments to raise both the program's payroll taxes and retirement age for benefits. He had signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 to cut funding for federal assistance such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and would discontinue the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. On the other side, defense spending doubled between 1981 and 1985. During Reagan's presidency, Project Socrates operated within the Defense Intelligence Agency to discover why the United States was unable to maintain its economic competitiveness. According to program director Michael Sekora, their findings helped the country exceed Soviet missile defense technology. #### Deregulation Reagan sought to loosen federal regulation of economic activities, and he appointed key officials who shared this agenda. William Leuchtenburg writes that by 1986, the Reagan administration eliminated almost half of the federal regulations that had existed in 1981. The 1982 Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act deregulated savings and loan associations by letting them make a variety of loans and investments outside of real estate. After the bill's passage, savings and loans associations engaged in riskier activities, and the leaders of some institutions embezzled funds. The administration's inattentiveness toward the industry contributed to the savings and loan crisis and costly bailouts. #### Deficits The deficits were exacerbated by the early 1980s recession, which cut into federal revenue. The national debt tripled between the fiscal years of 1980 and 1989, and the national debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product rose from 33 percent in 1981 to 53 percent by 1989. During his time in office, Reagan never fulfilled his 1980 campaign promise of submitting a balanced budget. The United States borrowed heavily to cover newly spawned federal budget deficits. Reagan described the tripled debt the "greatest disappointment of his presidency". Jeffrey Frankel opined that the deficits were a major reason why Reagan's successor, Bush, reneged on his campaign promise by raising taxes through the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. ### Assassination attempt On March 30, 1981, Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. outside the Washington Hilton. Also struck were: James Brady, Thomas Delahanty, and Tim McCarthy. Although "right on the margin of death" upon arrival at George Washington University Hospital, Reagan underwent surgery and recovered quickly from a broken rib, a punctured lung, and internal bleeding. Professor J. David Woodard says that the assassination attempt "created a bond between him and the American people that was never really broken". Later, Reagan came to believe that God had spared his life "for a chosen mission". ### Supreme Court appointments Reagan appointed three Associate Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, Antonin Scalia in 1986, and Anthony Kennedy in 1988. He also elevated William Rehnquist from Associate Justice to Chief Justice in 1986. The direction of the Supreme Court's reshaping has been described as conservative. ### Public sector labor union fights Early in August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike, violating a federal law prohibiting government unions from striking. On August 3, Reagan said that he would fire air traffic controllers if they did not return to work within 48 hours; according to him, 38 percent did not return. On August 13, Reagan fired roughly 12,000 striking air traffic controllers who ignored his order. He used military controllers and supervisors to handle the nation's commercial air traffic until new controllers could be hired and trained. The breaking of the PATCO strike demoralized organized labor, and the number of strikes fell greatly in the 1980s. With the assent of Reagan's sympathetic National Labor Relations Board appointees, many companies also won wage and benefit cutbacks from unions, especially in the manufacturing sector. During Reagan's presidency, the share of employees who were part of a labor union dropped from approximately one-fourth of the total workforce to approximately one-sixth of the total workforce. ### Civil rights Despite Reagan having opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the bill was extended for 25 years in 1982. He initially opposed the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but signed a veto-proof bill to create the holiday in 1983, and also alluded to claims that King was associated with communists during his career. In 1984, he signed legislation intended to impose fines for fair housing discrimination offenses. In March 1988, Reagan vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, but Congress overrode his veto. He had argued that the bill unreasonably increased the federal government's power and undermined the rights of churches and business owners. Later in September, legislation was passed to correct loopholes in the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Early in his presidency, Reagan appointed Clarence M. Pendleton Jr. as chair of the United States Commission on Civil Rights to criticism for politicizing the agency. Pendleton and Reagan's subsequent appointees steered the commission in line with Reagan's views on civil rights, arousing the ire of civil rights advocates. In 1987, Reagan unsuccessfully nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court as a way to achieve his civil rights policy that could not be fulfilled during his presidency; his administration had opposed affirmative action, particularly in education, federal assistance programs, housing and employment, but Reagan reluctantly continued these policies. In housing, Reagan's administration saw considerably fewer fair housing cases filed than the three previous administrations. Reagan's recasting of civil rights through reduced enforcement of civil rights laws has been regarded by some as the largest since Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency. ### War on drugs In response to concerns about the increasing crack epidemic, Reagan intensified the war on drugs in 1982. While the American public did not see drugs as an important issue then, the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Department of Defense all increased their anti-drug funding immensely. Reagan's administration publicized the campaign to gain support after crack became widespread in 1985. Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and 1988 to specify penalties for drug offenses. Both bills have been criticized in the years since for promoting racial disparities. Additionally, Nancy Reagan founded the "Just Say No" campaign to discourage others from engaging in recreational drug use and raise awareness about the dangers of drugs. A 1988 study showed 39 percent of high school seniors using illegal drugs compared to 53 percent in 1980, but Scott Lilienfeld and Hal Arkowitz say that the success of these types of campaigns have not been found to be affirmatively proven. ### Escalation of the Cold War Reagan ordered a massive defense buildup; he revived the B-1 Lancer program that had been rejected by the Carter administration, and deployed the MX missile. In response to Soviet deployment of the SS-20, he oversaw NATO's deployment of the Pershing missile in Western Europe. In 1982, Reagan tried to cut off the Soviet Union's access to hard currency by impeding its proposed gas line to Western Europe. It hurt the Soviet economy, but it also caused much ill will among American allies in Europe who counted on that revenue; he later retreated on this issue. In March 1983, Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to protect the United States from space intercontinental ballistic missiles. He believed that this defense shield could protect the country from nuclear destruction in a hypothetical nuclear war with the Soviet Union. There was much disbelief among the scientific community surrounding the program's scientific feasibility, leading opponents to dub the SDI "Star Wars", though Soviet leader Yuri Andropov said it would lead to "an extremely dangerous path". In a 1982 address to the British Parliament, Reagan said, "the march of freedom and democracy ... will leave Marxism–Leninism on the ash heap of history." Dismissed by the American press as "wishful thinking", Margaret Thatcher called the address a "triumph". David Cannadine says of Thatcher that "Reagan had been grateful for her interest in him at a time when the British establishment refused to take him seriously" with the two agreeing on "building up stronger defenses against Soviet Russia" and both believing in outfacing "what Reagan would later call 'the evil empire'" in reference to the Soviet Union during a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in March 1983. After Soviet fighters downed Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September, which included Larry McDonald and 61 other Americans, Reagan expressed outrage towards the Soviet Union. The next day, reports suggested that the Soviets had fired on the plane by mistake. In spite of the harsh, discordant rhetoric, Reagan's administration continued discussions with the Soviet Union on START I. Although the Reagan administration agreed with the communist government in China to reduce the sale of arms to Taiwan in 1982, Reagan himself was the first president to reject containment and détente, and to put into practice the concept that the Soviet Union could be defeated rather than simply negotiated with. His covert aid to Afghan mujahideen forces through Pakistan against the Soviets has been given credit for assisting in ending the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. However, the United States was subjected to blowback in the form of the Taliban that opposed them in the war in Afghanistan. In his 1985 State of the Union Address, Reagan proclaimed, "Support for freedom fighters is self-defense." Through the Reagan Doctrine, his administration supported anti-communist movements that fought against groups backed by the Soviet Union in an effort to rollback Soviet-backed communist governments and reduce Soviet influence across the world. Critics have felt that the administration ignored the human rights violations in the countries they backed, including genocide in Guatemala and mass killings in Chad. ### Invasion of Grenada On October 19, 1983, Maurice Bishop was overthrown and murdered by one of his colleagues. Several days later, Reagan ordered American forces to invade Grenada. Reagan cited a regional threat posed by a Soviet-Cuban military build-up in the Caribbean nation and concern for the safety of hundreds of American medical students at St. George's University as adequate reasons to invade. Two days of fighting commenced, resulting in an American victory. While the invasion enjoyed public support in the United States, it was criticized internationally, with the United Nations General Assembly voting to censure the American government. Cannon later noted that throughout Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign, the invasion overshadowed the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, which killed 241 Americans taking part in an international peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. ### 1984 election Reagan announced his reelection campaign on January 29, 1984, declaring, "America is back and standing tall." In February, his administration reversed the unpopular decision to send the United States Marine Corps to Lebanon, thus eliminating a political liability for him. Reagan faced minimal opposition in the Republican primaries, and he and Bush accepted the nomination at the Dallas convention in August. In the general election, his campaign ran the commercial, "Morning in America". At a time when the American economy was already recovering, former vice president Walter Mondale was attacked by Reagan's campaign as a "tax-and-spend Democrat", while Mondale criticized the deficit, the SDI, and Reagan's civil rights policy. However, Reagan's age induced his campaign managers to minimize his public appearances. Mondale's campaign believed that Reagan's age and mental health were issues before the October presidential debates. Following Reagan's performance in the first debate where he struggled to recall statistics, his age was brought up by the media in negative fashion. Reagan's campaign changed his tactics for the second debate where he quipped, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." This remark generated applause and laughter, even from Mondale. At that point, Broder suggested that age was no longer a liability for Reagan, and Mondale's campaign felt that "the election was over". In November, Reagan won a landslide reelection victory with 59 percent of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes from 49 states. Mondale won 41 percent of the popular vote and 13 electoral votes from the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota. ### Response to the AIDS epidemic The AIDS epidemic began to unfold in 1981, and AIDS was initially difficult to understand for physicians and the public. As the epidemic advanced, according to White House physician and later physician to the president, brigadier general John Hutton, Reagan thought of AIDS as though "it was the measles and would go away". The October 1985 death of the President's friend Rock Hudson affected Reagan's view; Reagan approached Hutton for more information on the disease. Still, between September 18, 1985, and February 4, 1986, Reagan did not mention AIDS in public. In 1986, Reagan asked C. Everett Koop to draw up a report on the AIDS issue. Koop angered many evangelical conservatives, both in and out of the Reagan administration, by stressing the importance of sex education including condom usage in schools. A year later, Reagan, who reportedly had not read the report, gave his first speech on the epidemic when 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS, and 20,849 had died of it. Reagan called for increased testing (including routine testing for marriage applicants) and mandatory testing of select groups (including federal prisoners). Even after this speech, however, Reagan remained reluctant to publicly address AIDS. Scholars and AIDS activists have argued that the Reagan administration largely ignored the AIDS crisis. Randy Shilts and Michael Bronski said that AIDS research was chronically underfunded during Reagan's administration, and Bronski added that requests for more funding by doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were routinely denied. In a September 1985 press conference, after Hudson announced his AIDS diagnosis, Reagan called a government AIDS research program a "top priority", but also cited budgetary constraints. Between the fiscal years of 1984 and 1989, federal spending on AIDS totaled \$5.6 billion. The Reagan administration proposed \$2.8 billion during this time period, but pressure from congressional Democrats resulted in the larger amount. ### Addressing apartheid Opposition to apartheid strengthened during Reagan's first term in office as its component disinvestment from South Africa movement, which had been in existence for quite some years. The opposition also gained critical mass following in the United States, particularly on college campuses and among mainline Protestant denominations. President Reagan was opposed to divestiture because, as he wrote in a letter to Sammy Davis Jr., it "would hurt the very people we are trying to help and would leave us no contact within South Africa to try and bring influence to bear on the government". He also noted the fact that the "American-owned industries there employ more than 80,000 blacks" and that their employment practices were "very different from the normal South African customs". The anti-communist focus of Reagan's administration lent itself to closer ties with the apartheid regime of South Africa, particularly with regards to matters pertaining to nuclear weapons. The Reagan administration developed constructive engagement with the South African government as a means of encouraging it to move away from apartheid gradually. It was part of a larger initiative designed to foster peaceful economic development and political change throughout southern Africa. This policy, however, engendered much public criticism, and renewed calls for the imposition of stringent sanctions. In response, Reagan announced the imposition of new sanctions on the South African government, including an arms embargo in late 1985. These sanctions were seen as weak by anti-apartheid activists and as insufficient by the president's opponents in Congress. In 1986, Congress approved the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which included tougher sanctions; Reagan's veto was overridden by Congress. Afterward, he remained opposed to apartheid and unsure of "how best to oppose it". Several European countries, as well as Japan, also imposed their sanctions on South Africa soon after. ### Libya bombing Contentious relations between Libya and the United States under President Reagan were revived in the West Berlin discotheque bombing that killed an American soldier and injured dozens of others on April 5, 1986. Stating that there was irrefutable evidence that Libya had a direct role in the bombing, Reagan authorized the use of force against the country. On April 14, the United States launched a series of airstrikes on ground targets in Libya. Thatcher allowed the United States Air Force to use Britain's air bases to launch the attack, on the justification that the United Kingdom was supporting America's right to self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. The attack was, according to Reagan, designed to halt Muammar Gaddafi's "ability to export terrorism", offering him "incentives and reasons to alter his criminal behavior". The attack was condemned by many countries; by an overwhelming vote, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to condemn the attack and deem it a violation of the Charter and international law. ### Iran–Contra affair Reagan authorized William J. Casey to arm the Contras, fearing that Communists would take over Nicaragua if it remained under the leadership of the Sandinistas. Congress passed the 1982 Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA and United States Department of Defense from using their budgets to provide aid to the Contras. Still, the Reagan administration raised funds for the Contras from private donors and foreign governments. When Congress learned that the CIA had secretly placed naval mines in Nicaraguan harbors, Congress passed a second Boland Amendment that barred granting any assistance to the Contras. By mid-1985, Hezbollah began to take American hostages in Lebanon, holding seven of them in reaction to the United States' support of Israel. Reagan procured the release of seven American hostages held by Hezbollah by selling American arms to Iran, then engaged in the Iran–Iraq War, in hopes that Iran would pressure Hezbollah to release the hostages. The Reagan administration sold over 2,000 missiles to Iran without informing Congress; Hezbollah released four hostages but captured an additional six Americans. On Oliver North's initiative, the administration redirected the proceeds from the missile sales to the Contras. The transactions were exposed by Ash-Shiraa in early November 1986. Reagan initially denied any wrongdoing, but on November 25, he announced that John Poindexter and North had left the administration and that he would form the Tower Commission to investigate the transactions. A few weeks later, Reagan asked a panel of federal judges to appoint a special prosecutor who would conduct a separate investigation. The Tower Commission released a report in February 1987 confirming that the administration had traded arms for hostages and sent the proceeds of the weapons sales to the Contras. The report laid most of the blame on North, Poindexter, and Robert McFarlane, but it was also critical of Donald Regan and other White House staffers. Investigators did not find conclusive proof that Reagan had known about the aid provided to the Contras, but the report noted that Reagan had "created the conditions which made possible the crimes committed by others" and had "knowingly participated or acquiesced in covering up the scandal". The affair damaged the administration and raised questions about Reagan's competency and the wisdom of conservative policies. The administration's credibility was also badly damaged on the international stage as it had violated its own arms embargo on Iran. ### Soviet decline and thaw in relations Although the Soviets did not accelerate military spending in response to Reagan's military buildup, their enormous military expenses, in combination with collectivized agriculture and inefficient planned manufacturing, were a heavy burden for the Soviet economy. At the same time, the prices of oil, the primary source of Soviet export revenues, fell to one third of the previous level in 1985. These factors contributed to a stagnant economy during Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as the Soviet Union's leader. Reagan's foreign policy towards the Soviets wavered between brinkmanship and cooperation. Reagan appreciated Gorbachev's revolutionary change in the direction of the Soviet policy and shifted to diplomacy, intending to encourage him to pursue substantial arms agreements. They held four summit conferences between 1985 and 1988. Reagan believed that if he could persuade the Soviets to allow for more democracy and free speech, this would lead to reform and the end of communism. The critical summit was in Reykjavík in 1986, where they agreed to abolish all nuclear weapons. However, Gorbachev added the condition that SDI research must be confined to laboratories during the ten-year period when disarmament would take place. Reagan refused, stating that it was defensive only and that he would share the secrets with the Soviets, thus failing to reach a deal. In June 1987, Reagan addressed Gorbachev during a speech at the Berlin Wall, demanding that he "tear down this wall". The remark was ignored at the time, but after the wall fell in November 1989, it was retroactively recast as a soaring achievement. In December, Reagan and Gorbachev met again at the Washington Summit to sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, committing to the total abolition of their respective short-range and medium-range missile stockpiles. The treaty established an inspections regime designed to ensure that both parties honored the agreement. In May 1988, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted in favor of ratifying the treaty, providing a major boost to Reagan's popularity in the aftermath of the Iran–Contra affair. A new era of trade and openness between the two powers commenced, and the United States and Soviet Union cooperated on international issues such as the Iran–Iraq War. ## 1989–2004: Post-presidency After leaving the presidency on January 20, 1989, Ronald and Nancy Reagan lived at 668 St. Cloud Road in Bel Air, in addition to Rancho del Cielo in Santa Barbara. He received multiple awards and honors, and received generous payments for speaking engagements. In 1991, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library opened. Reagan also addressed the 1992 Republican National Convention "to inspire allegiance to the party regulars"; publicly favored the Brady Bill, drawing criticism from gun control opponents; a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget; and the repeal of the 22nd Amendment. His final public speech occurred on February 3, 1994, during a tribute to him in Washington, D.C.; his last major public appearance was at the funeral of Richard Nixon on April 27, 1994. In August 1994, Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, which he announced through a handwritten letter in November. There was speculation over how long he had demonstrated symptoms of mental degeneration, but lay observations that he suffered from Alzheimer's while still in office have been widely refuted by medical experts; his doctors said that he first began exhibiting overt symptoms of the illness in late 1992 or 1993. Over time, the disease destroyed Reagan's mental capacity. By 1997, he was reported to recognize few people other than his wife, though he continued to walk through parks and on beaches, play golf, and visit his office in nearby Century City. Eventually, his family decided that he would live in quiet semi-isolation with his wife. By the end of 2003, Reagan had lost his ability to speak and was mostly confined to his bed, no longer able to recognize any family members. ### Death and funeral Reagan died of pneumonia, complicated by Alzheimer's, at his home in Los Angeles, on June 5, 2004. President George W. Bush called Reagan's death "a sad hour in the life of America". His public funeral was held in the Washington National Cathedral, where eulogies were given by Margaret Thatcher, Brian Mulroney, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Other world leaders attended including Mikhail Gorbachev and Lech Wałęsa. Reagan was interred at his presidential library. ## Legacy ### Historical reputation In 2008, British historian M. J. Heale summarized that scholars had reached a broad consensus in which "Reagan rehabilitated conservatism, turned the country to the right, practiced a 'pragmatic conservatism' that balanced ideology with the constraints of government, revived faith in the presidency and American self-respect, and contributed to critically ending the Cold War", which ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Many conservative and liberal scholars have agreed that Reagan has been the most influential president since Roosevelt, leaving his imprint on American politics, diplomacy, culture, and economics through his effective communication of his conservative agenda and pragmatic compromising. During the initial years of Reagan's post-presidency, historical rankings placed his presidency in the twenties. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, his presidency was often placed in the top ten. Many proponents, including his Cold War contemporaries, believe that his defense policies, economic policies, military policies, and hard-line rhetoric against the Soviet Union and communism, together with his summits with Gorbachev, played a significant part in ending the Cold War. Professor Jeffrey Knopf argues that while Reagan's practice of referring to the Soviet Union as "evil" probably made no difference to the Soviet leaders, it possibly gave encouragement to Eastern European citizens who opposed their communist regimes. President Truman's policy of containment is also regarded as a force behind the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan undermined the Soviet system itself. Nevertheless, Melvyn P. Leffler called Reagan "Gorbachev's minor, yet indispensable partner, setting the framework for the dramatic changes that neither anticipated happening anytime soon". Critics, for example Paul Krugman, note Reagan's tenure as having begun a period of increased income inequality, sometimes called the "Great Divergence". Krugman also views Reagan as having initiated the ideology of the current-day Republican Party, which he feels is led by "radicals" who seek to "undo the twentieth century" gains in income equality and unionization. Others, such as Nixon's Secretary of Commerce Peter G. Peterson, also criticize what they feel was not just Reagan's fiscal irresponsibility, but also ushering in an era where tax cutting "became the GOP's core platform". With resulting deficits and GOP leaders (speciously in Peterson's opinion) arguing supply-side gains would enable the country to "grow" its way out of deficits. Reagan was known for storytelling and humor, which involved puns and self-deprecation. Reagan also often emphasized family values, despite being the first president to have been divorced. He showed the ability to comfort Americans during the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Reagan's ability to talk about substantive issues with understandable terms and to focus on mainstream American concerns earned him the laudatory moniker the "Great Communicator". He also earned the nickname "Teflon President" in that public perceptions of him were not substantially tarnished by the multitude of controversies that arose during his administration. ### Political influence Reagan led a new conservative movement, altering the political dynamic of the United States. Conservatism became the dominant ideology for Republicans, displacing the party's faction of liberals and moderates. In his time, men began voting more Republican, and women began voting more Democrat – a gender distinction that has persisted. He was supported by young voters, an allegiance that shifted many of them to the party. He attempted to appeal to black voters in 1980, but would receive the lowest black vote for a Republican presidential candidate at the time. Throughout Reagan's presidency, Republicans were unable to gain complete control of Congress. The period of American history most dominated by Reagan and his policies (particularly on taxes, welfare, defense, the federal judiciary, and the Cold War) is known as the Reagan era, which suggests that the "Reagan Revolution" had a lasting impact on the United States in domestic and foreign policy. The Bill Clinton administration is often treated as an extension of the era, as is the George W. Bush administration. Since 1988, Republican presidential candidates have invoked Reagan's policies and beliefs. Carlos Lozada noted Trump's praising of Reagan in a book he published during his 2016 campaign.

Netley Abbey

Ruins of 13th-century abbey at Hampshire, England

Netley Abbey is a ruined late medieval monastery in the village of Netley near Southampton in Hampshire, England. The abbey was founded in 1239 as a house for monks of the austere Cistercian order. Despite royal patronage, Netley was never rich, produced no influential scholars nor churchmen, and its nearly 300-year history was quiet. The monks were best known to their neighbours for the generous hospitality they offered to travellers on land and sea. In 1536, Netley Abbey was seized by Henry VIII of England during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the buildings granted to William Paulet, a wealthy Tudor politician, who converted them into a mansion. The abbey was used as a country house until the beginning of the eighteenth century, after which it was abandoned and partially demolished for building materials. Subsequently the ruins became a tourist attraction, and provided inspiration to poets and artists of the Romantic movement. In the early twentieth century the site was given to the nation, and it is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, cared for by English Heritage. The extensive remains consist of the church, cloister buildings, abbot's house, and fragments of the post-Dissolution mansion. Netley Abbey is one of the best preserved medieval Cistercian monasteries in southern England. ## Foundation Netley was conceived by the influential Peter des Roches, who was Bishop of Winchester from 1205 until his death in 1238; the abbey was founded shortly after his death, in 1239. The founder's charter shows the name of the abbey as "the church of St Mary of Edwardstow", or the Latin "Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae de loco Sancti Edwardi" although the title of the charter calls it "Letley"; the present name of Netley is most likely derived from this. The abbey was one of a pair of monasteries which the bishop intended as a memorial to himself; the other is La Clarté-Dieu in Saint-Paterne-Racan, France. Des Roches began to purchase the lands for Netley's initial endowment in about 1236, but he died before the project was finished and the foundation was completed by his executors. According to the Chronicle of Waverley Abbey, the first monks arrived to settle the site on 25 July 1239 from neighbouring Beaulieu Abbey, a year after the bishop's death. The fact of its founder prior death before designation of the endowment was complete, put the incipient abbey in a difficult financial situation. It is thought that only after the house was taken under the wing of Henry III, who became interested in it in the mid-1240s, was progress made on the buildings. The King eventually assumed the role of patron in 1251. ## Buildings ### Church The fruits of royal patronage were demonstrated by the construction of a large church (72 metres (236 ft) long), built in the fashionable French-influenced Gothic style pioneered by Henry's masons at Westminster Abbey. The high quality and elaborate nature of the church's decoration, particularly its mouldings and tracery, indicate how the machine of royal patronage lead to a move away from the deliberate austerity of the early Cistercian churches towards the grandeur then considered appropriate to a secular church such as a cathedral. Construction of the church proceeded from east to west. The sanctuary and transepts were built first to allow the monks to hold services, and the nave was completed over time. It is not known precisely when the building work began, but major gifts by King Henry of roofing timber and lead from Derbyshire in 1251 and 1252 indicate that some of the eastern parts of the church, and probably of the east cloister range too, had by then reached an advanced stage. The presence of a foundation stone at the base of the southeast pier of the crossing inscribed "H. DI. GRA REX ANGE" (Latin for Henry by the Grace of God King of the English) shows that the foundations of the centre of the church reached ground level after 1251, the year Henry III formally became the abbey's patron. Taking many decades to complete, the church was probably finished between 1290 and 1320. Dating the various parts of the building relies predominantly on stylistic criteria. The church was cruciform in shape, with vaulting and a square sanctuary and a low central tower containing bells. It was aisled throughout, with a pair of chapels on the east side of each transept. There was no triforium, but a narrow gallery surmounted by a clerestory of triple lancet windows ran above each bay of the arcade, as can be seen in the surviving section in the south transept. The vaulting sprang directly from the top of the arcade. The wall at the eastern end of the sanctuary, probably built after 1260, had a large window which features an upper rose and elaborate tracery; the aisle windows were simple paired lancets recessed within an arch. In the nave, the south aisle had plain triple lancets set high in the wall to avoid the cloister roof. The north aisle windows by contrast had richly decorated cusped tracery, reflecting the changes in taste over the long period of construction, and suggesting that this was among the last parts of the church to be finished, probably in the very late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries. The west wall of the church also has a large window, the tracery of which was destroyed in a collapse during the eighteenth century. Surviving fragments show that it was built in a "freer and more advanced style" than other parts of the church, and suggest a date around the turn of the fourteenth century. Internally, the church was subdivided into several areas. The high altar was against the east wall of the sanctuary, flanked by two smaller altars on the side walls. To the west, under the tower, were the monks' choir stalls where they sat during services, and further west was a pulpitum or rood screen, which blocked access to the ritual areas of the church. In the nave, the lay brothers had their own choir stalls and altar for services. The monks of Netley kept up a schedule of services and prayer both day and night following the traditional canonical hours; a staircase in the south transept went up to the monks' dormitory, allowing them to convenient access to the night services. The lay brothers had their own entrance to the church at the west end via a covered gallery from their accommodation. Unlike other orders of monks who allowed parishioners and visitors admission to the nave, the Cistercians officially reserved their churches solely for the use of the monastic community. Others had to worship in a separate chapel in the abbey grounds close to the main gate. Over time this rule was relaxed to allow pilgrims to visit shrines, as at Hailes Abbey with its relic of the Holy Blood, and to allow the construction of tombs and chantries for patrons and wealthy benefactors of the house, as in the churches of other orders. Excavated sculpture shows that the church at Netley featured a number of elaborate tombs and monuments. The interior of the church was richly decorated. The walls were plastered and painted in white and maroon with geometric patterns and lines designed to give the impression of ashlar masonry. Architectural detail was also picked out in maroon. The floors were covered in polychrome encaustic tiles featuring foliage, heraldic beasts, and coats of arms including those of England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Queen Eleanor of Castile, Richard of Cornwall and many powerful noble families. The chapels in the south transept had tiles with symbols of Edward the Confessor and the Virgin Mary. The windows of the church were filled with painted glass, six panels of which have been recovered. They show scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, the Crucifixion, monks, monsters and humorous animals. ### Cloister and east range South of the church stands a cloister surrounded by ranges of buildings on three sides, the church forming the fourth. As is known, the cloister was the heart of the abbey, where the monks spent most of their time when not in church, engaged in study, copying books and the creation of illuminated manuscripts. The monks' desks were placed in the north walk of the cloister, and a cupboard for books in current use was carved into the external wall of the south transept. The east range, which was started at the same time as the church and probably took about 10 years to build, contained many of the abbey's most important rooms. The vaulted library and sacristy were on the ground floor, adjacent to the church. To the south was the chapter house, where the deliberations of the abbey took place and the monks met to transact business and to listen to a daily reading of a chapter of the Rule of St Benedict. At Netley this was a magnificent apartment divided into three aisles with vaults springing from four columns; a stone bench ran around the walls for the monks to sit on, and the abbot's throne was in the centre of the east wall. The entrance to the chapter house from the cloister is via an elaborately moulded arched doorway, flanked on each side by a window of similar size. The windows had sills and columns of Purbeck Marble, the whole forming an impressive composition appropriate to the second most important space in the abbey after the church. The windows on either side of the door would have been unglazed, so as to allow representatives of the laybrothers (who were not members of chapter) to listen to debates. The chapter house was also the site of some tombs, traditionally those of the abbots of a monastery. When the room was excavated, archaeologists discovered scattered human remains and evidence of graves beneath the medieval floor level, indicating that a number of burials. The parlour lies south, an austere, barrel vaulted room little more than a passageway through the building. Here the monks could talk without disturbing the silence in the cloister, which Cistercian rules insisted on. South of this runs a long vaulted hall with a central row of pillars supporting the roof. This room was much altered over time and probably served several purposes during the lifetime of the abbey. Initially, it may have served as the monks' day room and accommodation for novices, but as time went on it may have been converted into the misericord where the monks—initially only the sick, but by the later middle ages the whole convent—could eat meat dishes not normally allowed in the main dining hall. The monks' dormitory was on the top floor of the east range, a long room with a high pitched roof (the mark of which can still be seen on the transept wall) which ran the length of the building. This was entered by two staircases: the day stair went down into the cloister in the south-east corner; the night stair led into the south transept of the church to allow the monks to get easily from bed to choir at night. Initially the dormitory was an open hall, with the monks' beds placed along the walls, one under each of the small, slit-like windows. During the fourteenth century, when views of the necessity of sleeping in the same space together for the common life changed, the dormitory at Netley would, as at other houses, have been divided into sections with wooden dividers to give every monk his own private area, each leading off a central corridor. The treasury, a tiny vaulted room, was at the north end of the dormitory, presumably located for security at night. ### Reredorter and infirmary Another large building lies crosswise at the south end of the east range. Its lower level consists of a vaulted hall equipped with a grand thirteenth-century hooded fireplace and its own garderobe. It is not clear what this chamber was used for, but it may have been the monastic infirmary—if so, it was a most unusual, perhaps unique, arrangement. Normally in a medieval Cistercian monastery an infirmary with its own kitchens, chapel and ancillary buildings would have been located east of the main buildings around a second, smaller cloister, but at Netley these seem to be absent. So far, excavations have not revealed whether Netley had a separate infirmary complex. The upper floor of this building was the reredorter or latrine. It is a large room with a door conveniently leading into the monks' dormitory. The stalls were in the south wall and the effluent dropped into an underground stream which runs in a vaulted passage underneath the building. To the west of the reredorter block was the buttery, a room where the monks' wine (some of it direct from the king's cellars at Southampton) and beer were stored. Excavations in this area have revealed fragmentary remains which may be part of a separate kitchen for the richer diet allowed to the residents of the infirmary. ### South range During the Tudor conversion of the abbey to a private house the south range was extensively rebuilt, and only the north wall of the medieval structure remains, which makes tracing the monastic layout difficult. Going east to west, first came the day stair, then the warming house where the communal fire burned constantly to allow the monks to warm themselves after long hours of study in the unheated cloister. The room was probably vaulted and had its great fireplace on the west wall to allow heat to rise to the refectory or dining hall next door. It is likely that, as at the great Cistercian house Fountains Abbey, the chamber above the warming house was the muniment room, where the abbey's charters, records and title deeds, as well as those of local lords, were kept. The refectory projected south from the centre of the range, as was usual in Cistercian monasteries. This is now almost completely demolished save for the north wall, although the foundations survive underground and have been excavated. It was a long hall with a dais for the abbot and important guests at the south end. There was a pulpit in the west wall to allow a monk to read to the community during the meal. The kitchen lies west; it had a central fireplace, as was Cistercian custom, and was placed to allow food to be served through hatches both to the choir monks' refectory and to the separate dining hall for the lay brothers on the west side. ### West range The west range at Netley is small and does not run the full length of the west side of the cloister. It is divided in two by the original main entrance to the abbey, with an outer parlour where the monks could meet visitors. North of this on the ground floor were cellars for food storage, and to the south was the lay brothers' refectory. The upper floor, reached by a stair from the cloister, was the dormitory for the lay brothers. Netley was a late foundation, built at a time when the lay brothers were a declining part of the Cistercian economy, and it is probable that they were fewer in number, hence the small size of the accommodation needed. By the time the west range was completed in the fourteenth century they were rapidly disappearing, and had all but vanished by the end of the century. During the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most Cistercian houses took advantage of the large area of the monastery then left empty and converted the lay brothers' quarters to new uses. At some houses, such as Sawley Abbey in Lancashire, a series of comfortable chambers for the use of monastic officials or guests were built; elsewhere, such as Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire, the west range was turned into a private dwelling of great elegance for the abbot. The ruins of the west range at Netley are too fragmentary to be sure of their purpose in the latter part of the medieval period. All the buildings around the cloister were finished in the fourteenth century. There were subsequently few major structural changes during the monastic period aside from the re-vaulting of the south transept of the church at the end of the fifteenth century. It is likely, however, that there were many internal changes to match the rising standards of living during the later Middle Ages (as seen at Cleeve Abbey in Somerset) that have left no evidence on the surviving remains. ### Precinct A stone building to the east of the main complex is thought to have been the abbot's house. It contains two levels of vaulted apartments consisting of two halls, bedchambers, a private chapel and service rooms. The upper level was reached by an external staircase, which allowed this floor to be used independently if needed. The central core of the monastery was surrounded by a precinct containing an outer (public) courtyard and an inner (private) courtyard, gardens, barns, guesthouses for travellers, stables, fishponds, the home farm and industrial buildings. The site was defended by a high bank and moat, part of which remains east of the abbey. Entrance was strictly controlled by an outer and inner gatehouse. A chapel, known as the capella ante portas (Latin for chapel outside the gates) was placed by the outer gatehouse for the use of travellers and the local population. Of the precinct buildings, only the abbot's house, the moat and the fishponds have left visible remains. Netley's fresh water was supplied by two aqueducts which ran for several miles east and west of the abbey, up into the areas of modern Southampton and Eastleigh. The remains of the eastern aqueduct, now known as Tickleford Gully, can be seen in Wentworth Gardens, Southampton. ## Monastic history Henry III added to the endowment left by Peter des Roches, donating farmland, urban property in Southampton and elsewhere, and spiritual revenues from churches. By 1291, taxation returns show that the abbey had a clear annual revenue of £81, a comfortable income. However, shortly afterwards a period of bad management resulted in the abbey accruing substantial debts, and it was soon almost bankrupt. In 1328 the government was forced to appoint an administrator, John of Mere, to address the crisis. Despite forcing the abbot to apply revenues to debt repayment and to sell many of the estates, the operation was only partly successful. Ten years later the abbey was again appealing to the king for help with a disastrous financial situation. The monks blamed their problems on the cost of providing hospitality to the many travellers by sea, and the king's sailors who landed at the abbey. The king provided some small grants enabling the abbey to overcome its difficulties but the property sales meant that the abbey's income never recovered and it settled into what has been described as genteel poverty. Nevertheless, Netley remained a much respected institution by its neighbours until the end of its life as a monastery. It was not known for scholarship, wealth, or particular fervour, but it was highly regarded for its generosity to travellers and sailors, and for the devout lives ("by Raporte of good Religious conversation") led by its monks. The abbot was summoned on many occasions to sit in Parliament with fellow prelates in the House of Lords as one of the Lords Spiritual. Surviving reports suggest the abbey had a peaceful and scandal-free domestic life. ## A surviving book It is not a unique case among English medieval monasteries that almost nothing has survived of what must have been a number of books owned by the house as such or in the keeping of individual monks. These would include at least a small library with biblical texts, spiritual works and perhaps some books on practical subjects, bearing in mind that the management of the abbey plant would have been a considerable challenge. Furthermore, the celebration of the liturgy for a large part of the day and night would necessitate texts for the different participants, who as monks were for the most part not spectators but active participants, some of them with particular roles. Current scholarship has identified a single book as having belonged to Netley Abbey; it is now conserved as Arundel Ms. 69 in the British Library, London. The volume has an inscription, added in the 15th century on folio 265v: "Codex iste pertinet ad domum sancte Marie de Netteley" ("This codex (i.e. a book not a scroll) belongs to the house of Saint Mary of Netteley"). The volume itself is a Latin manuscript executed in the 13th century, a copy of Roger of Hoveden's Chronica ("Chronicles"). Roger (died c. 1201) was an English historian of the reigns of Henry II and Richard I particularly important for his account of the years 1148–1170. Little is known in detail about his life, but he may have been a priest and was a courtier to Henry II, and accompanied Richard I to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade and served as a local justice in the north of England, and more generally as a negotiator between the crown and various barons and monastic houses. ## Dissolution In 1535 the abbey's income was assessed in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, Henry VIII's general survey of Church finances prior to the plunder, at £160 gross, £100 net, which meant the following year that it came under the terms of the First Suppression Act, Henry's initial move in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. At the beginning of the following year, the king's commissioners, Sir James Worsley, John Paulet, George Paulet and William Berners, delivered a report to the government on the monasteries of Hampshire which provides a snapshot of Netley on the eve of the Dissolution. The commissioners noted that Netley was inhabited by seven monks, all of them priests, and the abbey was: > A hedde house of Monkes of thordre of Cisteaux, beinge of large buyldinge and situate upon the Ryvage of the Sees. To the Kinge's Subjects and Strangers travelinge the same Sees great Relief and Comforte. In addition to the monks, Netley was home to 29 servants and officials of the abbey, plus two Franciscan friars of the strict Observant part of that order who had been put into the abbot's custody by the king, presumably for opposing his religious policies. The royal officers also found plate and jewels (these were certainly objects for worship, such as reliquaries or crosses) in the treasury worth £43, "ornaments" worth £39, and agricultural produce and animals worth £103. The abbey's debts were moderate at £42. Abbot Thomas Stevens and his seven monks were forced to surrender their house to the king in the summer of 1536. Abbot Thomas Stevens and six of his brethren—the seventh opted to resign and become a secular priest—crossed Southampton Water to join their mother house of Beaulieu. Abbot Stevens was appointed Abbot of Beaulieu in 1536 and administered it for two years until Beaulieu in turn was forced to surrender to the king in April 1538. The monks received pensions after the fall of Beaulieu; Abbot Thomas ended his days as treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral, and died in 1550. ## Country house Following the dissolution of Netley, on 3 August 1536, King Henry granted the abbey buildings and some of its estates to Sir William Paulet, his Lord Treasurer and subsequently Marquess of Winchester. As soon as he took over, Sir William started the process of turning the abbey into a palace suitable for one of the most important politicians in England. He converted the nave of the church into his great hall, kitchens and service buildings, the transepts and crossing became a series of luxurious apartments for his personal use, the presbytery was retained as the chapel of the mansion. The monks' dormitory became the long gallery of the mansion and the latrine block became several grand chambers. He demolished the south range and refectory and built a new one with a central turreted gatehouse to provide the appropriate seigneurial emphasis needed for a classic Tudor courtyard house. He likewise demolished the cloister walks to make a central courtyard for his house and placed a large fountain in the centre. The precinct buildings were demolished to create formal gardens and terraces. His eventual successor William Paulet, 4th Marquess of Winchester (c.1560–1629) of Basing House, Hampshire, on encountering financial difficulties, sold Basing and Hound in 1602 to Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (1539–1621), of Tottenham House in Wiltshire, who used it as a residence, and died there in 1621. His eventual descendant William Seymour, 3rd Duke of Somerset (1652–1671) died aged 19 without progeny when his title passed by law to his heir male but his unentailed estates including Netley and Hound, passed top his sister Elizabeth Seymour, wife of Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury (1656–1741), who sold Netley in 1676 to Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester (1629–1700), later Duke of Beaufort. Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of Huntingdon, inhabited the abbey until the close of the seventeenth century. ## Romantic ruin Around 1700, Netley Abbey came into the hands of Sir Berkeley Lucy (also spelled Sir "Bartlet"), who decided in 1704 to demolish the by now unfashionable house in order to sell the materials. Sir Berkeley made an agreement with a Southampton builder, Mr Walter Taylor, to take down the former church. However, during the course of the demolition, the contractor was killed by the fall of tracery from the west window of the church and the scheme was halted. The abbey was subsequently abandoned and allowed to decay. In the 1760s Thomas Dummer, who owned estates in the area, moved the north transept to his estate at Cranbury Park near Winchester where it can be still be seen as a folly in the gardens of the house (at ). By the second half of the eighteenth century, the abbey, by then partially roofless and overgrown with trees and ivy, had become a famous ruin that attracted the attention of artists, dramatists and poets. In the nineteenth century, Netley became a popular tourist attraction (the novelist Jane Austen was among those who visited) and steps were taken to conserve the ruins. Archaeological excavations directed by Charles Pink and Reverend Edmund Kell took place in 1860. During the same period the owners decided to remove many of the Tudor additions to the building to create a more medieval feel to the site, resulting in the loss of much evidence of the abbey's post-Dissolution story. In 1922, the abbey was passed into state care by the then owner, Tankerville Chamberlayne, one time Member of Parliament (MP) for Southampton. Conservation and archaeological work on the abbey has continued. ## In literature and art Soon after the abbey had been allowed to fall into ruin, it began to attract the attention of artists and writers, and was a popular subject throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1755, the antiquarian Horace Walpole praised the ruins in his letters following a visit with the poet Thomas Gray, claiming they were "In short, not the ruins of Netley, but of Paradise". In 1764, George Keate wrote The Ruins of Netley Abbey, A poem, which showed a romantic appreciation of the ruins and evoked sympathy for the life formerly led there by the monks. He prefaced his poem with a heartfelt plea for the preservation of the remains. Keate was followed by other romantic poets including William Sotheby (Ode, Netley Abbey, Midnight, 1790). Sotheby's view of the abbey was gothic; he peoples the ruins with spectral processions and ghostly Cistercians. Nor was he the only one; in 1795 Richard Warner wrote a potboiler entitled Netley Abbey, a Gothic Story in two volumes, featuring skullduggery at the abbey during the middle ages. Dark deeds before the Dissolution also appeared in the section of Richard Harris Barham's Ingoldsby Legends (1837–1845) covering Netley. This complex satire pokes fun at the medieval church and the monks (whom he accuses of having walled up an erring nun in one of the vaults and ensuring God's revenge upon them) and the tourists who crowded contemporary Netley, while at the same time showing appreciation of the beauty of the ruins. Netley Abbey, an Operatic Farce, by William Pearce, was first performed in 1794 at Covent Garden. The set of the first production featured an elaborate mockup of the abbey ruins seen in the moonlight. The earliest surviving depiction of the abbey is by the engravers Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, who specialised in landmarks and great ruins. Their engraving (1733) shows the church of the abbey much as it is today, with the exception of the high vault of the south transept still present. The picture has notable errors and was clearly done from memory and rough sketches. The most famous artist to paint the ruins was John Constable, whose 1833 painting of the west end of the church shows it among trees. ## Present day ### Condition The visitor today will find the shell of the church and monastic buildings around the cloister plus the abbot's house. Little of the post-Dissolution mansion remains aside from the south range, foundations, alterations to the medieval structure in red Tudor brick and traces of the formal gardens. In most places the abbey stands close to its original height. The sacristy/library, the south transept chapels, the treasury, the reredorter undercroft and the lower floor of the abbot's house still have their vaults intact. Medieval heraldic polychrome tiles found on the site can be seen in the sacristy, and Henry III's foundation stone remains in the church. The abbey ruins are set in wooded parkland to the west of the village of Netley and constitute the most complete surviving Cistercian monastery in southern England. The site is maintained by English Heritage, and is open to the public. Netley is an Ancient Monument protected by law. ### Events During the summer months the abbey is occasionally host to events such as open-air theatre and was the site of a flashmob wedding on 25 June 2011. ### 2018 closure Netley Abbey was closed to the public in June 2018 due to safety concerns. English Heritage has taken the decision after scaffolding set up in the nave for conservation work was found to "fall far short" of expected standards. ## Local legends ### Walter Taylor Over the years several legends have grown up around the abbey, the best attested of which is that of Walter Taylor, the builder contracted to demolish the church. Legend has it that before starting the work he was warned in a dream that he would be punished if he committed sacrilege by damaging the building. The story is recounted by the eighteenth-century antiquary Browne Walters: > The earl (sic), it is said, made a contract with a Mr. Walter Taylor, a builder of Southampton, for the complete demolition of the Abbey; it being intended by Taylor to employ the materials in erecting a town house at Newport and other buildings. After making this agreement, however, Taylor dreamed that, as he was pulling down a particular window, one of the stones forming the arch fell upon him, and killed him. His dream impressed him so forcibly that he mentioned the circumstance to a friend, who is said to have been the father of the well-known Dr. Isaac Watts, and in some perplexity asked his advice. His friend thought it would be the safest course for him to have nothing to do with the affair, respecting which he had been so alarmingly forewarned, and endeavoured to persuade him to desist from his intention. Taylor, however, at last decided upon paying no attention to his dream, and accordingly began his operations for the pulling down of the building; in which he had not proceeded far, when, as he was assisting at the work, the arch of one of the windows, but not the one he had dreamed of (which was the east window still standing), fell upon his head and fractured his skull. It was thought at first that the wound would not prove mortal; but it was aggravated through the unskilfulness of the surgeon, and the man died. ### Blind Peter Another local legend states that during the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey's treasure was hidden down a secret tunnel with a lone monk to guard it. After many years of searching a treasure hunter called Slown is said to have entered an underground passage he had discovered only to return a few moments later screaming, "In the name of God, block it up," before dropping dead. ### The walled up nun The story of the nun walled up in a small room recounted in Richard Barham's The Ingoldsby Legends was a creation of the author and has no basis in fact or genuine folklore, as the author himself admits with a smile in his notes to the poem, attributing his story to one James Harrison: > a youthful but intelligent cab driver of Southampton, who "well remembers to have heard his grandmother say that 'Somebody told her so'."

The Bus Uncle

2006 viral video

The Bus Uncle is a Hong Kong Cantonese viral video depicting a verbal altercation between two men aboard a KMB bus in Hong Kong on 27 April 2006. The older and more belligerent of the two men was quickly nicknamed the "Bus Uncle", from the common Hong Kong practice of referring to older men as "Uncle" (阿叔). The altercation was recorded by a nearby passenger and uploaded to the Hong Kong Golden Forum, YouTube, and Google Video. The video became YouTube's most viewed video in May 2006, attracting viewers with the Bus Uncle's rhetorical outbursts and copious use of profanity, receiving 1.7 million hits in the first 3 weeks of that month. The video became a cultural sensation in Hong Kong, sparking debate and discussion on lifestyle, etiquette, civic awareness and media ethics within the city, and attracted the attention from media outlets around the world. ## Incident The incident took place at approximately 11pm on 27 April 2006 on the upper deck of a KMB Volvo Super Olympian double decker bus operating route 68X, en route to Yuen Long, Hong Kong. It began when a young bespectacled male passenger tapped the shoulder of a middle-aged man in front of him who was chatting on his mobile phone, asking the man to lower his voice. The older man later claimed that when he was tapped on the shoulder, he was under stress from an argument with his girlfriend and was calling the Samaritans. However, the younger man said that he was in fact merely chatting with friends. The older man turned around and started a monologue, ranting about being unnecessarily provoked under stress. The younger man, who seldom talked back, expressed a desire to end the discussion. However, the middle-aged man insisted that the matter was not settled and requested an apology from him. The younger man apologised, reluctantly shook hands, but also warned the older man regarding the use of maternal insults. This last warning resulted in more profanities from the older man. The video ends with the older man receiving a phone call. ## Video The video was filmed by a 21-year-old accountant and part-time psychology student Jon Fong Wing Hang (Chinese: 方穎恆; pinyin: Fāng Yǐnghéng; Jyutping: fong1 wing6 hang4). In a radio station phone-in, Fong stated that he recorded the incident in case the abusive man became violent. He claimed there was a second video yet to be posted online in which the younger man fought back by making fun of "Bus Uncle" with a friend on the phone. However, Fong told reporters that he "often takes videos as a hobby, and had just planned to share this one with friends." The video clip has English subtitles which, while erroneous in parts, never stray far from the general tenor of the Cantonese version. The "Bus Uncle" title for the video was coined by members of an Internet forum in reference to the older man in the video. In Hong Kong, it is common to refer to an older man as "Uncle" (阿叔), hence the English translation "The Bus Uncle". Lam's name appears as part of the title of the original video. Contrary to reports in Western media, the word "Uncle" (阿叔) was not used. On 28 May 2006, this incident was mentioned on the main evening news on TVB, as well as Cable TV news. News of the video clip later reached Western media and was widely syndicated and has received coverage from Channel NewsAsia, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal. ## Participants Reporters later identified the "Bus Uncle" as Roger Chan Yuet Tung (Chinese: 陳乙東; Jyutping: can4 jyut3 dung1), a 51-year-old restaurant worker who lived in Yuen Long. On 23 May 2006, 23-year-old property agent Elvis Ho Yui Hei (Chinese: 何銳熙; Jyutping: ho4 jeoi6 hei1), previously misidentified as "Alvin" or "Elvin" called a talk show on Commercial Radio Hong Kong claiming to be the young man involved in the argument. Elvis Ho regularly commuted home from work on the bus and reported that he often asked passengers to lower their voices so he could sleep during his trip. Ho said he forgave "Bus Uncle" and sympathized with whatever stress the older man was suffering from. He said his patience throughout the ordeal was inspired by t'ai chi ch'uan. Roger Chan lived alone and spent most of his adult life estranged from his family. The sudden exposure and negative media attention led many of his family members to change their phone numbers and further distance themselves from him. In an interview he did with Next Magazine, neighbours reported that they often hear him speaking loudly on the phone and they found him erratic and emotional. Among the many details he shared with the magazine he stated that he once won the lottery, but due to a gambling problem he also ended up heavily in debt to thugs. Consequently, he was incarcerated in Belgium after being caught smuggling heroin where he learned to create fruit sculptures. He had an inconsistent work history and spent long stretches unemployed. He received public benefits and financial support from his elderly mother. After his identity was revealed, Chan was criticized for reportedly demanding remuneration for interviews. ## Aftermath Sing Tao Daily reported that Chan visited Ho's office on 31 May 2006 in Mong Kok to apologize for the dispute and to initiate a business proposal for the duo to hold a "Bus Uncle Rave Party". Chan was quickly rejected and expelled by Ho, who expressed outrage towards the journalists who arranged the meeting and threatened legal action against the press. Ming Pao opined that the use of profanity by the "Bus Uncle" and threatening behavior theoretically contravened the general code of conduct of bus passengers, and that he had violated two public order laws – Section 46(1)(a), (n)(ii) and 57(1) of the Road Traffic (Public Service Vehicles) Regulations, and Section 17B(2) of the Public Order Ordinance – which potentially carried financial penalties and imprisonment. Next Magazine journalists interviewed Chan at his home in Yuen Long, and his interview became the magazine's cover story on 1 June 2006. On 7 June 2006, Chan, who had been hired as a Public Relations officer in the Steak Expert restaurant chain, was physically assaulted at work by three unidentified masked men who then fled the scene. Chan sustained severe injuries to his eyes and face and was admitted to the emergency department for treatment. The restaurant owner, Mr. Lee, was later pressured by his wife and daughter to fire Chan after magazine allegations emerged of Chan's exploits in a Shenzhen karaoke hostess bar. Chan resigned after the owner's wife attempted to overdose on drugs, ostensibly in an effort to force the issue. ## Social impact ### Effects on popular culture Some of Chan's quotes were later frequently used, mimicked, and parodied in Hong Kong, particularly by teenagers. 「你有壓力,我有壓力」("You have stress, I have stress"), 「未解決!」("It's not settled!") have become catchphrases on Internet forums, posters, and radio programmes. Various remixes have been created of the video, including pop, karaoke, rap, dance and disco remixes. There have also been parodies of an apology, "re-enactments" of the incident with video game characters, composite pictures, movie posters, and versions featuring Darth Vader and Adagio for Strings. According to researcher Donna Chu, many of these videos referenced other local popular culture and had jovial, sarcastic tones, stating that "The collective behaviors in YouTube suggest that this hugely popular video-sharing site takes on the roles as public space, a playground and a cultural public sphere." Merchandise such as cartoon T-shirts and mobile phone ringtones have also been produced and sold on the Internet. In June 2006, TVB produced an advertisement parodying the Bus Uncle video promoting its coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup which featured TVB sports commentator Lam Sheung Yee (林尚義), whose voice resembles Chan's, on a bus playing the role of the Bus Uncle. In the advertisement, a passenger sitting behind Lam Sheung Yee (played by Lam Man Chung) questions whether Lam Sheung Yee feels pressured for his responsibilities in the upcoming World Cup, which would be his last TV appearance before retirement. Turning around, Lam replies that there is no pressure and emphasises the issue (i.e. the viewers' demand for World Cup coverage) has been resolved. The passenger then offers to shake hands with Lam Sheung Yee, calling for a truce. Sitcoms produced by ATV and TVB have also referenced the video in argument scenes. In episode 67 of the TVB sitcom Welcome to the House (高朋滿座), the young bespectacled main character tried to stop a man from talking too loudly on the mobile phone in the cinema. As a result, he was harshly rebuked by the man. Once his family knew about the incident from a video uploaded on the Internet, they taught the character to be more assertive and not to allow himself to be bullied. In the end, he was able to stand up to the same man when they met again in the cinema and remove him from the premises. ### Stress in Hong Kong Although many found the video humorous and entertaining, others warned that it hinted at a more alarming and sinister prognosis of life in stress-filled Hong Kong and other overcrowded areas. Lee Sing, director of the Hong Kong Mood Disorders Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, warned that Hong Kong's high-stress working environments are spawning a city-full of "Bus Uncles". Lee estimated that one of every 50 Hongkongers suffers from intermittent explosive disorder, turning one into a "ticking time bomb" of rage and violence. Journalism professor and Internet expert Anthony Fung Ying-him also attributed the popularity of the low-resolution video of a "trivial event" to the emotional climate of the city. While other viral videos are favoured by specific demographics, this one spread widely due to its universal expression of "the true feelings of ordinary people." On the other hand, Ho Kwok Leung, an applied social science lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, held that attention surrounding the video reflected the boring lives of Hong Kong people. With few interesting topics to discuss, they savour the pleasure of spreading information to a vast audience and the creation of Internet memes. Furthermore, the banning of the use of some video catchphrases in certain schools made the incident more appealing. This lifestyle, according to Leung, is fertile ground for the cultivation of a "video clip culture". ### Civic awareness concerns Ah Nong (阿濃, J: aa3 nung4, P: Ā Nóng), a popular literary figure and artist in Hong Kong, believed that the incident highlighted the apathy of the common Hong Kong people. He emphasised that during the heated exchange between Chan and Ho, not a single bystander came to Ho's aid. He recalled an incident a few years back where he confronted a man smoking on the lower deck of a bus and was scolded for the rest of the journey. He said it was useless to complain to the bus driver who would not bother to waste his time, let alone the other passengers. Ah Nong argued that in such a society, a person can be accused of wrongdoing despite good intentions. There was support for Ho's desire for a lower volume as well as sympathy for the stress felt by the "Bus Uncle." Others maintained that Chan's actions were atypical of etiquette in Hong Kong. Apple Tse Ho Yi, minister of the Hong Kong Christian Service, carried out a survey of 506 students over the age of 12 following the incident. Of the respondents who claim they regularly encountered people speaking loudly on the phone on buses, only 47% said they would intervene by talking to the phone user or alerting the driver. Reasons for inaction include fear, apathy and inability to solve the problem. On civic awareness, the majority of the respondents did not consider chatting loudly on the phone to be wrong. Tse concluded that the current generation of Hong Kong young people have poor civic awareness, and it is natural that disputes often occur due to inconsideration. Speaking about the incident on Commercial Radio, Journalist Chip Tsao described Chan's behaviour as "noise raping" and said that the incident was a manifestation of underlying social tension as well as the mindset of a "common Hongkonger". He criticised Ho as being a stereotype of present-day Hong Kong youth – speechless and too weak. Chan's placement as runner-up "Person of the Year" announced by Radio Television Hong Kong was seen by Michael DeGolyer of the Hong Kong Standard that it might have struck a chord with the general population. Ng Fung Sheung, a social science lecturer of the City University of Hong Kong, explained that Hong Kong people tend to chat loudly in public places. She attributed this phenomenon to the television screens found in many vehicles and trains, which broadcast programmes at high volumes. She suggested that the government should provide better civic education for the public to make them more considerate of others. When it comes to schools which banned the usage of catch phrases like "I'm stressed!" Ng stated that teachers must be able to distinguish whether the students really face pressure or are simply following the trend, and provide guidance if necessary. ### Criticism of media ethics Some denied that any social insight could be gleaned from the video clip, arguing that the frenzy was artificially created by sensationalist newspapers to boost circulation and profits. Clement So York-kee, Director of the School of Journalism at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, warned that methods to uncover the incident between Chan and Ho "did not seem to ... [involve the] traditional practice of news reporting." For example, several media outlets offered rewards on unmasking Bus Uncle's identity. In late May 2006, a group of journalists and photographers initiated and followed Chan's second meeting with Ho. After Ho's refusal, they brought Bus Uncle to a dinner and karaoke session. Although the session was widely reported, many believed it was artificially created news and unworthy of front-page attention. Ta Kung Pao stated that the Bus Uncle incident tested the professionalism of the Hong Kong mass media, its editorial noting that Chan sought remuneration for interviews and made many extraordinary claims about himself which were published without verification. The editorial concluded by advising journalists not to fabricate news, but instead to emphasise the verifiability of stories and consider carefully whether an incident is newsworthy. Others held that the frenzy was not the product of a media conspiracy, but rather a reflection of the public's curiosity and Hong Kong's competitive consumer-driven media market. The situation also allowed camera phone marketers to highlight the potential comedic value and draw attention away from privacy concerns. In the aftermath, other videos featuring similar public outbursts were published, including a video depicting a female at Hong Kong International Airport who became hysterical after missing her flight which was viewed 750,000 times in five days.

Don Bradman

Australian cricketer (1908–2001)

Sir Donald George Bradman, AC (27 August 1908 – 25 February 2001), nicknamed "The Don", was an Australian international cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time. His cricketing successes have been claimed by Shane Warne, among others, to make Bradman the "greatest sportsperson" in history. Bradman's career Test batting average of 99.94 is considered by some to be the greatest achievement by any sportsman in any major sport. Although Bradman reportedly disliked fame, his iconic status made him one of Australia's best-known personalities and arguably the country's "first celebrity". The story that the young Bradman practised alone with a cricket stump and a golf ball is part of Australian folklore. His meteoric rise from bush cricket to the Australian Test team took just over two years. Before his 22nd birthday, he had set many records for top scoring, some of which still stand, and became Australia's sporting idol at the height of the Great Depression. This hero status grew and continued through the Second World War. During a 20-year playing career, Bradman consistently scored at a level that made him, in the words of former Australia captain Bill Woodfull, "worth three batsmen to Australia". A controversial set of tactics, known as Bodyline, was specially devised by the England team to curb his scoring. As a captain and administrator, Bradman was committed to attacking, entertaining cricket; he drew spectators in record numbers. He hated the constant adulation, however, and it affected how he dealt with others. The focus of attention on Bradman's individual performances strained relationships with some teammates, administrators and journalists, who thought him aloof and wary. Following an enforced hiatus due to the Second World War, he made a dramatic comeback, captaining an Australian team known as "The Invincibles" on a record-breaking unbeaten tour of England. A complex and highly driven man, not given to close personal relationships, Bradman retained a pre-eminent position in the game by acting as an administrator, selector and writer for three decades following his retirement. Even after he became reclusive in his declining years, Bradman's opinion was highly sought, and his status as a national icon was still recognised. Almost fifty years after his retirement as a Test player, in 1997, Prime Minister John Howard called him the "greatest living Australian". Bradman's image has appeared on postage stamps and coins, and a museum dedicated to his life was opened while he was still living. On the centenary of his birth, 27 August 2008, the Royal Australian Mint issued a \$5 commemorative gold coin with Bradman's image. In 2009, he was inducted posthumously as an inaugural member into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. ## Early years Donald George Bradman was the youngest son of George and Emily (née Whatman) Bradman, and was born on 27 August 1908 at Cootamundra, New South Wales (NSW). He had a brother, Victor, and three sisters – Islet, Lilian and Elizabeth May. Bradman was of English heritage on both sides of his family. His grandfather Charles Andrew Bradman had left Withersfield, Suffolk, for Australia. In 1930, when he played at Cambridge during his first tour of England, 21-year-old Bradman took the opportunity to trace his forebears in the region. Bradman was also partly of Italian lineage; one of his great-grandfathers had been one of the first Italians to migrate to Australia in 1826. Bradman's parents lived in the hamlet of Yeo Yeo, near Stockinbingal. His mother, Emily, gave birth to him at the Cootamundra home of Granny Scholz, a midwife, which is now the Bradman Birthplace Museum. Bradman's mother had hailed from Mittagong in the NSW Southern Highlands and in 1911, when Bradman was about two-and-a-half years old, his parents decided to relocate to Bowral, close to Emily's family and friends in Mittagong, as life at Yeo Yeo was proving difficult. Emily, who bowled left-arm spin, played in the women's intercolonial cricket competition between the main states in 1890s. Bradman practised batting incessantly during his youth. He invented his own solo cricket game, using a cricket stump for a bat and a golf ball. A water tank, mounted on a curved brick stand, stood on a paved area behind the family home. When hit into the curved brick facing of the stand, the ball rebounded at high speed and varying angles—and Bradman would attempt to hit it again. This form of practice developed his timing and reactions to a high degree. In more formal cricket, Bradman hit his first century at the age of 12, with an undefeated 115 playing for Bowral Public School against Mittagong High School. ### Bush cricketer During the 1920–21 season, Bradman acted as scorer for the local Bowral team, captained by his uncle George Whatman. In October 1920, he filled in when the team was one man short, scoring 37\* and 29\* on debut. During the season, Bradman's father took him to the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) to watch the fifth Ashes Test match. On that day, Bradman formed an ambition, telling his father: "I shall never be satisfied until I play on this ground." Bradman left school in 1922 and went to work for a local real estate agent who encouraged his sporting pursuits by giving him time off when necessary. He gave up cricket in favour of tennis for two years but resumed playing cricket in 1925–26. Bradman became a regular selection for the Bowral team; several outstanding performances earned him the attention of Sydney newspapers. Competing on matting-over-concrete pitches, Bowral played other rural towns in the Berrima District competition. Against Wingello, a team that included the future Test bowler Bill O'Reilly, Bradman made 234. In the competition final against Moss Vale, which extended over five consecutive Saturdays, Bradman scored 320 not out. During the following Australian winter (1926), the ageing Australian team lost The Ashes in England, and a number of Test players retired. The New South Wales Cricket Association began a hunt for new talent. Mindful of Bradman's big scores for Bowral, the association wrote to him, requesting his attendance at a practice session in Sydney. He was subsequently chosen for the "Country Week" tournaments at both cricket and tennis, to be played during separate weeks. Bradman's boss presented him with an ultimatum: he could have only one week away from work, and therefore had to choose between the two sports. He chose cricket. Bradman's performances during Country Week resulted in an invitation to play grade cricket in Sydney for St George in the 1926–27 season. He scored 110 on his debut, making his first century on a turf pitch. On 1 January 1927, Bradman turned out for the NSW second team. For the remainder of the season, he travelled the 130 kilometres (81 mi) from Bowral to Sydney every Saturday to play for St George. ### First-class debut The next season continued the rapid rise of the "Boy from Bowral". Selected to replace the unfit Archie Jackson in the NSW team, Bradman made his first-class debut at the Adelaide Oval, aged 19. He secured the achievement of a hundred on debut, with an innings of 118 featuring what soon became his trademarks—fast footwork, calm confidence and rapid scoring. In the final match of the season, he made his first century at the SCG, against the Sheffield Shield champions Victoria. Despite his potential, Bradman was not chosen for the Australian second team to tour New Zealand. Bradman decided that his chances for Test selection would be improved by moving to Sydney for the 1928–29 season, when England were to tour in defence of the Ashes. Initially, he continued working in real estate, but later took a promotions job with the sporting goods retailer Mick Simmons Ltd. In the first match of the Sheffield Shield season, he scored a century in each innings against Queensland. He followed this with scores of 87 and 132 not out against the England touring team, and was rewarded with selection for the first Test, to be played at Brisbane. ## Test career Playing in only his tenth first-class match, Bradman, nicknamed "Braddles" by his teammates, found his initial Test a harsh learning experience. Caught on a sticky wicket, Australia were all out for 66 in the second innings and lost by 675 runs (still a Test record). Following scores of 18 and 1, the selectors dropped Bradman to twelfth man for the Second Test. An injury to Bill Ponsford early in the match required Bradman to field as substitute while England amassed 636, following their 863 runs in the First Test. RS "Dick" Whitington wrote, "... he had scored only nineteen himself and these experiences appear to have provided him with food for thought". Recalled for the Third Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Bradman scored 79 and 112 to become the youngest player to make a Test century, although the match was still lost. Another loss followed in the Fourth Test. Bradman reached 58 in the second innings and appeared set to guide the team to victory when he was run out. It was to be the only run out of his Test career. The losing margin was just twelve runs. The improving Australians did manage to win the Fifth and final Test. Bradman top-scored with 123 in the first innings and was at the wicket in the second innings when his captain, Jack Ryder, hit the winning runs. Bradman completed the season with 1,690 first-class runs, averaging 93.88, and his first multiple century in a Sheffield Shield match, not out against Victoria, set a new ground record for the SCG. Bradman averaged 113.28 in 1929–30. In a trial match to select the team that would tour England, he was last man out in the first innings for 124. As his team followed on, the skipper Bill Woodfull asked Bradman to keep the pads on and open the second innings. By the end of play, he was 205 not out, on his way to 225. Against Queensland at the SCG, Bradman set a then world record for first-class cricket by scoring 452 not out; he made his runs in only 415 minutes. Not long after the feat, he recalled: > On 434...I had a curious intuition...I seemed to sense that the ball would be a short-pitched one on the leg-stump, and I could almost feel myself getting ready to make my shot before the ball was delivered. Sure enough, it pitched exactly where I had anticipated, and, hooking it to the square-leg boundary, I established the only record upon which I had set my heart. Although he was an obvious selection to tour England, Bradman's unorthodox style raised doubts that he could succeed on the slower English pitches. Percy Fender wrote: > ...he will always be in the category of the brilliant, if unsound, ones. Promise there is in Bradman in plenty, though watching him does not inspire one with any confidence that he desires to take the only course which will lead him to a fulfilment of that promise. He makes a mistake, then makes it again and again; he does not correct it, or look as if he were trying to do so. He seems to live for the exuberance of the moment. The encomiums were not confined to his batting gifts; nor did the criticism extend to his character. "Australia has unearthed a champion", said former Australian Test great Clem Hill, "self-taught, with natural ability. But most important of all, with his heart in the right place." Selector Dick Jones weighed in with the observation that it was "good to watch him talking to an old player, listening attentively to everything that is said and then replying with a modest 'thank you'." ### 1930 tour of England England were favourites to win the 1930 Ashes series, and if the Australians were to exceed expectations their young batsmen, Bradman and Jackson, needed to prosper. With his elegant batting technique, Jackson appeared the brighter prospect of the pair. However, Bradman began the tour with 236 at Worcester and went on to score 1,000 first-class runs by the end of May, the fifth player (and first Australian) to achieve this rare feat. In his first Test appearance in England, Bradman hit 131 in the second innings but England won the match. His batting reached a new level in the Second Test at Lord's where he scored 254 as Australia won and levelled the series. Later in life, Bradman rated this the best innings of his career as "practically without exception every ball went where it was intended to go". Wisden noted Bradman's fast footwork and how he hit the ball "all round the wicket with power and accuracy", as well as faultless concentration in keeping the ball on the ground. In terms of runs scored, this performance was soon surpassed. In the Third Test, at Headingley, Bradman scored a century before lunch on 11 July, the first day of the Test match to equal the performances of Victor Trumper and Charlie Macartney. In the afternoon, Bradman added another century between lunch and tea, before finishing the day on 309 not out. He remains the only Test player to pass 300 in one day's play. His eventual score of 334 was a world-record, exceeding the previous mark of 325 by Andy Sandham. Bradman dominated the Australian innings; the second-highest tally was 77 by Alan Kippax. Businessman Arthur Whitelaw later presented Bradman with a cheque for £1,000 in appreciation of his achievement. The match ended in anti-climax as poor weather prevented a result, as it also did in the Fourth Test. In the deciding Test at The Oval, England made 405. During an innings stretching over three days due to intermittent rain, Bradman made yet another multiple century, this time 232, which helped give Australia a big lead of 290 runs. In a crucial partnership with Jackson, Bradman battled through a difficult session when England fast bowler Harold Larwood bowled short on a pitch enlivened by the rain. Wisden gave this period of play only a passing mention: > On the Wednesday morning the ball flew about a good deal, both batsmen frequently being hit on the body...on more than one occasion each player cocked the ball up dangerously but always, as it happened, just wide of the fieldsmen. A number of English players and commentators noted Bradman's discomfort in playing the short, rising delivery. The revelation came too late for this particular match, but was to have immense significance in the next Ashes series. Australia won the match by an innings and regained the Ashes. The victory made an impact in Australia. With the economy sliding toward depression and unemployment rapidly rising, the country found solace in sporting triumph. The story of a self-taught 22-year-old from the bush who set a series of records against the old rival made Bradman a national hero. The statistics he achieved on the tour, especially in the Test matches, broke records for the day and some have stood the test of time. In all, Bradman scored 974 runs at an average of 139.14 during the Test series, with four centuries, including two double hundreds and a triple. As of 2022, no-one has matched or exceeded 974 runs or three double centuries in one Test series; the record of 974 runs exceeds the second-best performance by 69 runs and was achieved in two fewer innings. Bradman's first-class tally, 2,960 runs (at an average of 98.66 with 10 centuries), was another enduring record: the most by any overseas batsman on a tour of England. On the tour, the dynamic nature of Bradman's batting contrasted sharply with his quiet, solitary off-field demeanour. He was described as aloof from his teammates and he did not offer to buy them a round of drinks, let alone share the money given to him by Whitelaw. He spent a lot of his free time alone, writing, as he had sold the rights to a book. On his return to Australia, Bradman was surprised by the intensity of his reception; he became a "reluctant hero". Mick Simmons wanted to cash in on their employee's newly won fame, asking Bradman to leave his teammates and attend official receptions they organised in Adelaide, Melbourne, Goulburn, his hometown of Bowral and Sydney, where he received a brand new custom-built Chevrolet. At each stop, Bradman received a level of adulation that "embarrassed" him. This focus on individual accomplishment, in a team game, "... permanently damaged relationships with his contemporaries". Commenting on Australia's victory, the team's vice-captain Vic Richardson said, "...we could have played any team without Bradman, but we could not have played the blind school without Clarrie Grimmett". A modest Bradman can be heard in a 1930 recording saying, "I have always endeavoured to do my best for the side, and the few centuries that have come my way have been achieved in the hope of winning matches. My one idea when going into bat was to make runs for Australia." ### Reluctant hero In 1930–31, against the first West Indian side to visit Australia, Bradman's scoring was more sedate than in England—although he did make 223 in 297 minutes in the Third Test at Brisbane and 152 in 154 minutes in the following Test at Melbourne. However, he scored quickly in a very successful sequence of innings against South Africa in the Australian summer of 1931–32. For NSW against the tourists, he made 30, 135 and 219. In the Test matches, he scored 226 (277 minutes), 112 (155 minutes), 2 and 167 (183 minutes); his 299 not out in the Fourth Test, at Adelaide, set a new record for the highest score in a Test in Australia. Australia won nine of the ten Tests played over the two series. At this point, Bradman had played fifteen Test matches since the beginning of 1930, scoring 2,227 runs at an average of 131. He had played eighteen innings, scoring ten centuries, six of which had extended beyond 200. His overall scoring rate was 42 runs per hour, with 856 (or 38.5% of his tally) scored in boundaries. Significantly, he had not hit a six, which typified Bradman's attitude: if he hit the ball along the ground, then it could not be caught. During this phase of his career, his youth and natural fitness allowed him to adopt a "machine-like" approach to batting. The South African fast bowler Sandy Bell described bowling to him as, "heart-breaking ... with his sort of cynical grin, which rather reminds one of the Sphinx ... he never seems to perspire". Between these two seasons, Bradman seriously contemplated playing professional cricket in England with the Lancashire League club Accrington, a move that, according to the rules of the day, would have ended his Test career. A consortium of three Sydney businesses offered an alternative. They devised a two-year contract whereby Bradman wrote for Associated Newspapers, broadcast on Radio 2UE and promoted the menswear retailing chain FJ Palmer and Son. However, the contract increased Bradman's dependence on his public profile, making it more difficult to maintain the privacy that he ardently desired. In a second-class fixture in November 1931, Bradman scored 100 off 22 balls in a three over spell in a match for Blackheath against Lithgow. Bradman's score of 256 included 14 sixes and 29 fours (notably hitting more sixes in this one innings than he hit in his entire first class career). Bradman's chaotic wedding to Jessie Menzies in April 1932 epitomised these new and unwelcome intrusions into his private life. The church "was under siege all throughout the day... uninvited guests stood on chairs and pews to get a better view"; police erected barriers that were broken down and many of those invited could not get a seat. Just weeks later, Bradman joined a private team organised by Arthur Mailey to tour the United States and Canada. He travelled with his wife, and the couple treated the trip as a honeymoon. Playing 51 games in 75 days, Bradman scored 3,779 runs at 102.1, with eighteen centuries. Although the standard of play was not high, the effects of the amount of cricket Bradman had played in the three previous years, together with the strains of his celebrity status, began to show on his return home. ### Bodyline Within the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which administered English cricket at the time, few voices were more influential than "Plum" Warner's, who, when considering England's response to Bradman, wrote that it "must evolve a new type of bowler and develop fresh ideas and strange tactics to curb his almost uncanny skill". To that end, Warner orchestrated the appointment of Douglas Jardine as England captain in 1931, as a prelude to Jardine leading the 1932–33 tour to Australia, with Warner as team manager. Remembering that Bradman had struggled against bouncers during his 232 at The Oval in 1930, Jardine decided to combine traditional leg theory with short-pitched bowling to combat Bradman. He settled on the Nottinghamshire fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce as the spearheads for his tactics. In support, the England selectors chose another three pacemen for the squad. The unusually high number of fast bowlers caused a lot of comment in both countries and roused Bradman's own suspicions. Bradman had other problems to deal with at this time; among these were bouts of illness from an undiagnosed malaise which had begun during the tour of North America, and that the Australian Board of Control had initially refused permission for him to write a column for the Sydney Sun newspaper. Bradman, who had signed a two-year contract with the Sun, threatened to withdraw from cricket to honour his contract when the board denied him permission to write; eventually, the paper released Bradman from the contract, in a victory for the board. In three first-class games against England before the Tests, Bradman averaged just 17.16 in six innings. Jardine decided to give the new tactics a trial in only one game, a fixture against an Australian XI at Melbourne. In this match, Bradman faced the leg theory and later warned local administrators that trouble was brewing if it continued. He withdrew from the First Test at the SCG amid rumours that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Despite his absence, England employed what were already becoming known as the Bodyline tactics against the Australian batsmen and won an ill-tempered match. The public clamoured for the return of Bradman to defeat Bodyline: "he was the batsman who could conquer this cankerous bowling... 'Bradmania', amounting almost to religious fervour, demanded his return". Recovered from his indisposition, Bradman returned to the side in Kippax's position. A world record crowd of 63,993 at the MCG saw Bradman come to the crease on the first day of the Second Test with the score at 2/67. A standing ovation ensued that delayed play for several minutes. Bradman anticipated receiving a bouncer as his first ball and, as the bowler delivered, he moved across his stumps to play the hook shot. The ball failed to rise and Bradman dragged it onto his stumps; the first-ball duck was his first in a Test. The crowd fell into stunned silence as he walked off. However, Australia took a first innings lead in the match, and another record crowd on 2 January 1933 watched Bradman hit a counter-attacking second innings century. His unbeaten 103 (from 146 balls) in a team total of 191 helped set England a target of 251 to win. Bill O'Reilly and Bert Ironmonger bowled Australia to a series-levelling victory amid hopes that Bodyline was beaten. The Third Test at the Adelaide Oval proved pivotal. There were angry crowd scenes after the Australian captain Bill Woodfull and wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield were hit by bouncers. An apologetic Warner entered the Australian dressing room and was rebuked by Woodfull. Woodfull's remarks (that "...there are two teams out there and only one of them is playing cricket") were leaked to the press, and Warner and others attributed this to Australian opening batsman Jack Fingleton; however, for many years (even after Fingleton's death) a bitter war of accusation passed between Fingleton and Bradman as to who was the real source of the leak. In a cable to the MCC, the Australian Board of Control repeated the allegation of poor sportsmanship directed at Warner by Woodfull. With the support of the MCC, England continued with Bodyline despite Australian protests. The tourists won the last three Tests convincingly and regained the Ashes. Bradman caused controversy with his own tactics. Always seeking to score, and with the leg side packed with fielders, he often backed away and hit the ball into the vacant half of the outfield with unorthodox shots reminiscent of tennis or golf. This brought him 396 runs (at 56.57) for the series and plaudits for attempting to find a solution to Bodyline, although his series average was just 57% of his career mean. Fingleton was in no doubt that Bradman's game altered irrevocably as a consequence of Bodyline, writing: > Bodyline was specially prepared, nurtured for and expended on him and, in consequence, his technique underwent a change quicker than might have been the case with the passage of time. Bodyline plucked something vibrant from his art. The constant glare of celebrity and the tribulations of the season forced Bradman to reappraise his life outside the game and to seek a career away from his cricketing fame. Harry Hodgetts, a South Australian delegate to the Board of Control, offered Bradman work as a stockbroker if he would relocate to Adelaide and captain the South Australia team (SA). Unknown to the public, the SA Cricket Association (SACA) instigated Hodgetts' approach and subsidised Bradman's wage. Although his wife was hesitant about moving, Bradman eventually agreed to the deal in February 1934. ### Declining health and a brush with death In his farewell season for NSW, Bradman averaged 132.44, his best yet. He was appointed vice-captain for the 1934 tour of England. However, "he was unwell for much of the [English] summer, and reports in newspapers hinted that he was suffering from heart trouble". Although he again started with a double century at Worcester, his famed concentration soon deserted him. Wisden wrote: > ...there were many occasions on which he was out to wild strokes. Indeed at one period he created the impression that, to some extent, he had lost control of himself and went in to bat with an almost complete disregard for anything in the shape of a defensive stroke. At one stage, Bradman went thirteen first-class innings without a century, the longest such spell of his career, prompting suggestions that Bodyline had eroded his confidence and altered his technique. After three Tests, the series was locked up 1–1, and Bradman had scored 133 runs in five innings. The Australians travelled to Sheffield and played a warm-up game before the Fourth Test. Bradman started slowly and then, "...the old Bradman [was] back with us, in the twinkling of an eye, almost". He went on to make 140, with the last 90 runs coming in just 45 minutes. On the opening day of the Fourth Test at Headingley (Leeds), England were out for 200, but Australia slumped to 3/39, losing the third wicket from the last ball of the day. Listed to bat at number five, Bradman would start his innings the next day. That evening, Bradman declined an invitation to dinner from Neville Cardus, telling the journalist that he wanted an early night because the team needed him to make a double century the next day. Cardus pointed out that his previous innings on the ground was 334, and the law of averages was against another such score. Bradman told Cardus, "I don't believe in the law of averages". In the event, Bradman batted all of the second day and into the third, putting on a then world record partnership of 388 with Bill Ponsford. When he was finally out for 304 (473 balls, 43 fours and two sixes), Australia had a lead of 350 runs, but rain prevented them from forcing a victory. The effort of the lengthy innings stretched Bradman's reserves of energy, and he did not play again until the Fifth Test at The Oval, the match that would decide the Ashes. In the first innings at The Oval, Bradman and Ponsford recorded an even more massive partnership, this time 451 runs. It had taken them less than a month to break the record they had set at Headingley; this new world record was to last 57 years. Bradman's share of the stand was 244 from 271 balls, and the Australian total of 701 set up victory by 562 runs. For the fourth time in five series, the Ashes changed hands. England would not recover them again until after Bradman's retirement. Seemingly restored to full health, Bradman blazed two centuries in the last two games of the tour. However, when he returned to London to prepare for the trip home, he experienced severe abdominal pain. It took a doctor more than 24 hours to diagnose acute appendicitis and a surgeon operated immediately. Bradman lost a lot of blood during the four-hour procedure and peritonitis set in. Penicillin and sulphonamides were still experimental treatments at this time; peritonitis was usually a fatal condition. On 25 September, the hospital issued a statement that Bradman was struggling for his life and that blood donors were needed urgently. "The effect of the announcement was little short of spectacular". The hospital could not deal with the number of donors and closed its switchboard in the face of the avalanche of telephone calls generated by the news. Journalists were asked by their editors to prepare obituaries. O'Reilly took a call from King George V's secretary asking that the King be kept informed of the situation. Bradman's wife started the month-long journey to London as soon as she received the news. En route, she heard a rumour that her husband had died. A telephone call clarified the situation and by the time she reached London, Bradman had begun a slow recovery. He followed medical advice to convalesce, taking several months to return to Australia and missing the 1934–35 Australian season. ### Internal politics and the Test captaincy There was off-field intrigue in Australian cricket during the antipodean winter of 1935. Australia, scheduled to make a tour of South Africa at the end of the year, needed to replace the retired Woodfull as captain. The Board of Control wanted Bradman to lead the team, yet, on 8 August, the board announced his withdrawal from the team due to a lack of fitness. Surprisingly, in the light of this announcement, Bradman led the South Australian team in a full programme of matches that season. The captaincy was given to Vic Richardson, Bradman's predecessor as South Australian captain. Cricket author Chris Harte's analysis of the situation is that a prior (unspecified) commercial agreement forced Bradman to remain in Australia. Harte attributed an ulterior motive to his relocation: the off-field behaviour of Richardson and other South Australian players had displeased the SACA, which was looking for new leadership. To help improve discipline, Bradman became a committeeman of the SACA, and a selector of the South Australian and Australian teams. He took his adopted state to its first Sheffield Shield title for ten years, Bradman weighing in with personal contributions of 233 against Queensland and 357 against Victoria. He finished the season with 369 (in 233 minutes), a South Australian record, made against Tasmania. The bowler who dismissed him, Reginald Townley, would later become leader of the Tasmanian Liberal Party. Australia defeated South Africa 4–0 and senior players such as O'Reilly were pointed in their comments about the enjoyment of playing under Richardson's captaincy. A group of players who were openly hostile toward Bradman formed during the tour. For some, the prospect of playing under Bradman was daunting, as was the knowledge that he would additionally be sitting in judgement of their abilities in his role as a selector. To start the new season, the Test side played a "Rest of Australia" team, captained by Bradman, at Sydney in early October 1936. The Test XI suffered a big defeat, due to Bradman's 212 and a haul of 12 wickets taken by leg-spinner Frank Ward. Bradman let the members of the Test team know that despite their recent success, the team still required improvement. Shortly afterwards, his first child was born on 28 October, but died the next day. He took time out of cricket for two weeks and on his return made 192 in three hours against Victoria in the last match before the beginning of the Ashes series. The Test selectors made five changes to the team who had played in the previous Test match. Significantly, Australia's most successful bowler, Clarrie Grimmett, was replaced by Ward, one of four players making their debut. Bradman's role in Grimmett's omission from the team was controversial and it became a theme that dogged Bradman as Grimmett continued to be prolific in domestic cricket while his successors were ineffective—he was regarded as having finished the veteran bowler's Test career in a political purge. Australia fell to successive defeats in the opening two Tests, Bradman making two ducks in his four innings, and it seemed that the captaincy was affecting his form. The selectors made another four changes to the team for the Third Test at Melbourne. Bradman won the toss on New Year's Day 1937, but again failed with the bat, scoring just 13. The Australians could not take advantage of a pitch that favoured batting, and finished the day at 6/181. On the second day, rain dramatically altered the course of the game. With the sun drying the pitch (in those days, covers could not be used during matches) Bradman declared to get England in to bat while the pitch was "sticky"; England also declared to get Australia back in, conceding a lead of 124. Bradman countered by reversing his batting order to protect his run-makers while conditions improved. The ploy worked and Bradman went in at number seven. In an innings spread over three days, he battled influenza while scoring 270 off 375 balls, sharing a record partnership of 346 with Jack Fingleton, and Australia went on to victory. In 2001, Wisden rated this performance as the best Test match innings of all time. The next Test, at the Adelaide Oval, was fairly even until Bradman played another patient second innings, making 212 from 395 balls. Australia levelled the series when the erratic left-arm spinner "Chuck" Fleetwood-Smith bowled Australia to victory. In the series-deciding Fifth Test, Bradman returned to a more aggressive style in top-scoring with 169 (off 191 balls) in Australia's 604 and Australia won by an innings. Australia's achievement of winning a Test series after outright losses in the first two matches has never been repeated in Test cricket. ### End of an era During the 1938 tour of England, Bradman played the most consistent cricket of his career. He needed to score heavily as England had a strengthened batting line-up, while the Australian bowling was over-reliant on O'Reilly. Grimmett was overlooked, but Jack Fingleton made the team, so the clique of anti-Bradman players remained. Playing 26 innings on tour, Bradman recorded 13 centuries (a new Australian record) and again made 1,000 first-class runs before the end of May, becoming the only player to do so twice. In scoring 2,429 runs, Bradman achieved the highest average ever recorded in an English season: 115.66. In the First Test, England amassed a big first innings score and looked likely to win, but Stan McCabe made 232 for Australia, a performance Bradman rated as the best he had ever seen. With Australia forced to follow-on, Bradman fought hard to ensure McCabe's effort was not in vain, and he secured the draw with 144 not out. It was the slowest Test hundred of his career and he played a similar innings of 102 not out in the next Test as Australia struggled to another draw. Rain completely washed out the Third Test at Old Trafford. Australia's opportunity came at Headingley, a Test described by Bradman as the best he ever played in. England batted first and made 223. During the Australian innings, Bradman backed himself by opting to bat on in poor light conditions, reasoning that Australia could score more runs in bad light on a good pitch than on a rain affected pitch in good light, when he had the option to go off. He scored 103 out of a total of 242 and the gamble paid off, as it meant there was sufficient time to push for victory when an England collapse left them a target of only 107 to win. Australia slumped to 4/61, with Bradman out for 16. An approaching storm threatened to wash the game out, but the poor weather held off and Australia managed to secure the win, a victory that retained the Ashes. For the only time in his life, the tension of the occasion got to Bradman and he could not watch the closing stages of play, a reflection of the pressure that he felt all tour: he described the captaincy as "exhausting" and said he "found it difficult to keep going". The euphoria of securing the Ashes preceded Australia's heaviest defeat. At The Oval, England amassed a world record of 7/903 and their opening batsman Len Hutton scored an individual world record, by making 364. In an attempt to relieve the burden on his bowlers, Bradman took a rare turn at bowling. During his third over, he fractured his ankle and teammates carried him from the ground. With Bradman injured and Fingleton unable to bat because of a leg muscle strain, Australia were thrashed by an innings and 579 runs, which remains the largest margin in Test cricket history. Unfit to complete the tour, Bradman left the team in the hands of vice-captain Stan McCabe. At this point, Bradman felt that the burden of captaincy would prevent him from touring England again, although he did not make his doubts public. Despite the pressure of captaincy, Bradman's batting form remained supreme. An experienced, mature player now commonly called "The Don" had replaced the blitzing style of his early days as the "Boy from Bowral". In 1938–39, he led South Australia to the Sheffield Shield and made a century in six consecutive innings to equal CB Fry's world record. Bradman totalled 21 first-class centuries in 34 innings, from the beginning of the 1938 tour of England (including preliminary games in Australia) until early 1939. The next season, Bradman made an abortive bid to join the Victoria state side. The Melbourne Cricket Club advertised the position of club secretary and he was led to believe that if he applied, he would get the job. The position, which had been held by Hugh Trumble until his death in August 1938, was one of the most prestigious jobs in Australian cricket. The annual salary of £1,000 would make Bradman financially secure while allowing him to retain a connection with the game. On 18 January 1939, the club's committee, on the casting vote of the chairman, chose former Test batsman Vernon Ransford over Bradman. In August 1939, Bradman won the South Australian squash championships, beating Australian Davis Cup tennis player Don Turnbull in the final. Turnbull won the first two games in the best of five game contest and led 8-3 in the third game with five match points, but Bradman won the game and the fourth. Turnbull led 8-5 in the fifth game but Bradman went on to win. The 1939–40 season was Bradman's most productive ever for SA: 1,448 runs at an average of 144.8. He made three double centuries, including 251 not out against NSW, the innings that he rated the best he ever played in the Sheffield Shield, as he tamed Bill O'Reilly at the height of his form. However, it was the end of an era. The outbreak of World War II led to the indefinite postponement of all cricket tours, and the suspension of the Sheffield Shield competition. ### Troubled war years Bradman joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) on 28 June 1940 and was passed fit for air crew duty. The RAAF had more recruits than it could equip and train and Bradman spent four months in Adelaide before the Governor-General of Australia, Lord Gowrie, persuaded Bradman to transfer to the army, a move that was criticised as a safer option for him. Given the rank of lieutenant, he was posted to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, Victoria, to act as a divisional supervisor of physical training. The exertion of the job aggravated his chronic muscular problems, diagnosed as fibrositis. Surprisingly, in light of his batting prowess, a routine army test revealed that Bradman had poor eyesight. Invalided out of service in June 1941, Bradman spent months recuperating, unable even to shave himself or comb his hair due to the extent of the muscular pain he suffered. He resumed stockbroking during 1942. In his biography of Bradman, Charles Williams expounded the theory that the physical problems were psychosomatic, induced by stress and possibly depression; Bradman read the book's manuscript and did not disagree. Had any cricket been played at this time, he would not have been available. Although he found some relief in 1945 when referred to the Melbourne masseur Ern Saunders, Bradman permanently lost the feeling in the thumb and index finger of his (dominant) right hand. In June 1945, Bradman faced a financial crisis when the firm of Harry Hodgetts collapsed due to fraud and embezzlement. Bradman moved quickly to set up his own business, utilising Hodgetts' client list and his old office in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. The fallout led to a prison term for Hodgetts, and left a stigma attached to Bradman's name in the city's business community for many years. However, the SA Cricket Association had no hesitation in appointing Bradman as their delegate to the Board of Control in place of Hodgetts. Now working alongside some of the men he had battled in the 1930s, Bradman quickly became a leading light in the administration of the game. With the resumption of international cricket, he was once more appointed a Test selector, and played a major role in planning for post-war cricket. ### "The ghost of a once-great cricketer" In 1945–46, Bradman suffered regular bouts of fibrositis while coming to terms with increased administrative duties and the establishment of his business. He played for South Australia in two matches to help with the re-establishment of first-class cricket and later described his batting as "painstaking". Batting against the Australian Services cricket team, Bradman scored 112 in less than two hours, yet Dick Whitington (playing for the Services) wrote, "I have seen today the ghost of a once-great cricketer". Bradman declined a tour of New Zealand and spent the winter of 1946 wondering whether he had played his last match. "With the English team due to arrive for the 1946–47 Ashes series, the media and the public were anxious to know if Bradman would lead Australia." His doctor recommended against a return to the game. Encouraged by his wife, Bradman agreed to play in lead-up fixtures to the Test series. After hitting two centuries, Bradman made himself available for the First Test at The Gabba. Controversy emerged on the first day of the First Test at Brisbane. After compiling an uneasy 28 runs, Bradman hit a ball to the gully fieldsman, Jack Ikin. "An appeal for a catch was denied in the umpire's contentious ruling that it was a bump ball". At the end of the over, England captain Wally Hammond spoke with Bradman and criticised him for not "walking"; "from then on the series was a cricketing war just when most people desired peace", Whitington wrote. Bradman regained his finest pre-war form in making 187, followed by 234 during the Second Test at Sydney (Sid Barnes also scored 234 during the innings, many in a still-standing record 405-run 5th-wicket partnership with Bradman. Barnes later recalled that he purposely got out on 234 because "it wouldn't be right for someone to make more runs than Bradman"). Australia won both matches by an innings. Jack Fingleton speculated that had the decision at Brisbane gone against him, Bradman would have retired, such were his fitness problems. In the remainder of the series, Bradman made three half-centuries in six innings, but he was unable to make another century; nevertheless, his team won handsomely, scoring 3–0. He was the leading batsman on either side, with an average of 97.14. Nearly 850,000 spectators watched the Tests, which helped lift public spirits after the war. ### Century of centuries and "The Invincibles" India made its first tour of Australia in the 1947–48 season. On 15 November, Bradman made 172 against them for an Australian XI at Sydney, his 100th first-class century. The first non-Englishman to achieve the milestone, Bradman remains the only Australian to have done so. In five Tests, he scored 715 runs (at 178.75 average). His last double century (201) came at Adelaide, and he scored a century in each innings of the Melbourne Test. On the eve of the Fifth Test, he announced that the match would be his last in Australia, although he would tour England as a farewell. Australia had assembled one of the great teams of cricket history. Bradman made it known that he wanted to go through the tour unbeaten, a feat never before accomplished. English spectators were drawn to the matches knowing that it would be their last opportunity to see Bradman in action. RC Robertson-Glasgow observed of Bradman that: > Next to Mr. Winston Churchill, he was the most celebrated man in England during the summer of 1948. His appearances throughout the country were like one continuous farewell matinée. At last his batting showed human fallibility. Often, especially at the start of the innings, he played where the ball wasn't, and spectators rubbed their eyes. Despite his waning powers, Bradman compiled 11 centuries on the tour, amassing 2,428 runs (average 89.92). His highest score of the tour (187) came against Essex, when Australia compiled a world record of 721 runs in a day. In the Tests, he scored a century at Trent Bridge, but the performance most like his pre-war exploits came in the Fourth Test at Headingley. England declared on the last morning of the game, setting Australia a world record 404 runs to win in only 345 minutes on a heavily worn pitch. In partnership with Arthur Morris (182), Bradman reeled off 173 not out and the match was won with 15 minutes to spare. The journalist Ray Robinson called the victory "the 'finest ever' in its conquest of seemingly insuperable odds". In the final Test at The Oval, Bradman walked out to bat in Australia's first innings. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and three cheers from the opposition. His Test batting average stood at 101.39. Facing the wrist-spin of Eric Hollies, Bradman pushed forward to the second ball that he faced, was deceived by a googly, and was bowled between bat and pad for a duck. An England batting collapse resulted in an innings defeat, denying Bradman the opportunity to bat again and so his career average finished at 99.94; if he had scored just four runs in his last innings, it would have been 100. A story developed over the years that claimed Bradman missed the ball because of tears in his eyes, a claim Bradman denied for the rest of his life. The Australian team won the Ashes 4–0, completed the tour unbeaten, and entered history as "The Invincibles". Just as Bradman's legend grew, rather than diminished, over the years, so too has the reputation of the 1948 team. For Bradman, it was the most personally fulfilling period of his playing days, as the divisiveness of the 1930s had passed. He wrote: > Knowing the personnel, I was confident that here at last was the great opportunity which I had longed for. A team of cricketers whose respect and loyalty were unquestioned, who would regard me in a fatherly sense and listen to my advice, follow my guidance and not question my handling of affairs...there are no longer any fears that they will query the wisdom of what you do. The result is a sense of freedom to give full reign to your own creative ability and personal judgment. With Bradman now retired from professional cricket, RC Robertson-Glasgow wrote of the English reaction "... a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal". ## Statistical summary ### Test match performance ### First-class performance ### Test records Bradman still holds the following significant records for Test match cricket: #### Batting average - Highest career batting average (minimum 20 innings): 99.94 - Highest series batting average (minimum 4-Test series): 201.50 (1931–32); also second-highest: 178.75 (1947–48) #### Conversion rate - Highest percentage of centuries per innings played: 36.25% (29 centuries from 80 innings) - Highest percentage of double centuries per innings played: 15% (12 double centuries from 80 innings) - Highest 50/100 conversion rate (minimum 2000 runs): 69.05% (29 centuries converted from 42 innings of ≥ 50 runs) - Highest 100/200 conversion rate (minimum 2000 runs): 41.38% (12 double centuries converted from 29 innings of ≥ 100 runs) #### Multiples of 100 runs - Most double centuries: 12 - Most double centuries in a series: 3 (1930); also 2 (1931–32, 1934, 1936–37) - Most triple centuries: 2 (equal with Chris Gayle, Brian Lara and Virender Sehwag) Note: Bradman was stranded on 299\* in the 4th Test against South Africa in 1932. #### Scoring rate - Most centuries accumulated within single sessions of play: 6 (1 pre lunch, 2 lunch-tea, 3 tea-stumps) - Most runs in one day's play: 309 (1930) #### Fastest to multiples of 1000 runs - Fewest matches required to reach 1000 (7 matches), 2000 (15 matches), 3000 (23 matches), 4000 (31 matches), 5000 (36 matches) and 6000 (45 matches) Test runs. - Fewest innings required to reach 2000 (22 innings), 3000 (33 innings), 4000 (48 innings), 5000 (56 innings) and 6000 (68 innings) Test runs. #### Other - Highest peak Test batting rating: 961 - Highest percentage of team runs over career: 24.28% - Highest 5th wicket partnership: 405 (with Sid Barnes, 1946–47) - Highest score by a number 7 batsman: 270 (1936–37) - Most runs against one opponent: 5,028 (England) - Most hundreds against one opponent: 19 (England) - Most runs in one series: 974 (1930) - Most consecutive matches in which he made a century: 6 (the last three Tests in 1936–37, and the first three Tests in 1938) ### Cricket context Bradman's Test batting average of 99.94 has become one of cricket's most famous, iconic statistics. No other player who has played more than 20 Test match innings has finished their career with a Test average of more than 62. Bradman scored centuries at a rate better than one every three innings—in 80 Test innings, Bradman scored 29 centuries. Only 11 players have since surpassed his total, all at a much slower rate: the next fastest player to reach 29 centuries, Sachin Tendulkar, required nearly twice as long (148 innings) to do so. In addition, Bradman's total of 12 Test double hundreds—constituting 15% of his innings—remains the most achieved by any Test batsman and was accumulated faster than any other player's total. For comparison, the next-highest totals of Test double hundreds are Kumar Sangakkara's 11 in 223 innings (4.9%), Brian Lara's 9 in 232 innings (3.9%), and Wally Hammond's 7 in 140 innings (5%); the next-highest rate of scoring Test double centuries was achieved by Vinod Kambli, whose 21 innings included 2 double centuries (9.5%). ### World sport context Wisden hailed Bradman as "the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games". Statistician Charles Davis analysed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen by comparing the number of standard deviations that they stand above the mean for their sport. The top performers in his selected sports are: The statistics show that "no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket". In order to post a similarly dominant career statistic as Bradman, a baseball batter would need a career batting average of .392, while a basketball player would need to score an average of 43.0 points per game over their career. The respective records are .366 and 30.1. When Bradman died, Time allocated a space in its "Milestones" column for an obituary: > ...Australian icon considered by many to be the pre-eminent sportsman of all time...One of Australia's most beloved heroes, he was revered abroad as well. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, his first question to an Australian visitor was, "Is Sir Donald Bradman still alive?" ## Playing style Bradman's early development was shaped by the high bounce of the ball on matting-over-concrete pitches. He favoured "horizontal-bat" shots (such as the hook, pull and cut) to deal with the bounce and devised a unique grip on the bat handle that would accommodate these strokes without compromising his ability to defend. Employing a side-on stance at the wicket, Bradman kept perfectly still as the bowler ran in. His backswing had a "crooked" look that troubled his early critics, but he resisted entreaties to change. His backswing kept his hands in close to the body, leaving him perfectly balanced and able to change his stroke mid-swing, if need be. Another telling factor was the decisiveness of Bradman's footwork. He "used the crease" by either coming metres down the pitch to drive, or playing so far back that his feet ended up level with the stumps when playing the cut, hook or pull. Bradman's game evolved with experience. He temporarily adapted his technique during the Bodyline series, deliberately moving around the crease in an attempt to score from the short-pitched deliveries. At his peak, in the mid-1930s, he had the ability to switch between a defensive and attacking approach as the occasion demanded. After the Second World War, he adjusted to bat within the limitations set by his age, becoming a steady "accumulator" of runs. However, Bradman never truly mastered batting on sticky wickets. Wisden commented, "[i]f there really is a blemish on his amazing record it is ... the absence of a significant innings on one of those 'sticky dogs' of old". ## After cricket After his return to Australia, Bradman played in his own Testimonial match at Melbourne, scoring his 117th and last century, and receiving £9,342 in proceeds (\~\$A606,489 in 2021 terms). In the 1949 New Year Honours, he was appointed Knight Bachelor for his services to the game, becoming the only Australian cricketer ever to be knighted. He commented that he "would have preferred to remain just Mister". The following year he published a memoir, Farewell to Cricket. Bradman accepted offers from the Daily Mail to travel with, and write about, the 1953 and 1956 Australian teams in England. The Art of Cricket, his final book published in 1958, is an instructional manual. Bradman retired from his stockbroking business in June 1954, depending on the "comfortable" income earned as a board member of 16 publicly listed companies. His highest profile affiliation was with Argo Investments Limited, where he was chairman for a number of years. Charles Williams commented that, "[b]usiness was excluded on medical grounds, [so] the only sensible alternative was a career in the administration of the game which he loved and to which he had given most of his active life". Bradman was honoured at a number of cricket grounds, notably when his portrait was hung in the Long Room at Lord's; until Shane Warne's portrait was added in 2005, Bradman was one of just three Australians to be honoured in this way. Bradman inaugurated a "Bradman Stand" at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 1974; the Adelaide Oval also opened a Bradman Stand in 1990, which housed new media and corporate facilities. The Oval's Bradman Stand was demolished in 2013 as the stadium underwent an extensive re-development. Later in 1974, he attended a Lord's Taverners function in London where he experienced heart problems, which forced him to limit his public appearances to select occasions only. With his wife, Bradman returned to Bowral in 1976, where the new cricket ground was named in his honour. He gave the keynote speech at the historic Centenary Test at Melbourne in 1977. On 16 June 1979, the Australian government awarded Bradman the nation's second-highest civilian honour at that time, Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), "in recognition of service to the sport of cricket and cricket administration". In 1980, he resigned from the ACB, to lead a more secluded life. ### Administrative career In addition to acting as one of South Australia's delegates to the Board of Control from 1945 to 1980, Bradman was a committee member of the SACA between 1935 and 1986. It is estimated that he attended 1,713 SACA meetings during this half century of service. Aside from two years in the early 1950s, he filled a selector's berth for the Test team between 1936 and 1971. Cricket saw an increase in defensive play during the 1950s. As a selector, Bradman favoured attacking, positive cricketers who entertained the paying public. He formed an alliance with Australian captain Richie Benaud, seeking more attractive play, with some success. He served two high-profile periods as chairman of the board of Control, in 1960–63 and 1969–72. During the first, he dealt with the growing prevalence of illegal bowling actions in the game, a problem that he adjudged "the most complex I have known in cricket, because it is not a matter of fact but of opinion". The major controversy of his second stint was a proposed tour of Australia by South Africa in 1971–72. On Bradman's recommendation, the series was cancelled. Cricket journalist Michael Coward said of Bradman as an administrator: > Bradman was more than a cricket player nonpareil. He was...an astute and progressive administrator; an expansive thinker, philosopher and writer on the game. Indeed, in some respects, he was as powerful, persuasive and influential a figure off the ground as he was on it. In the late 1970s, Bradman played an important role during the World Series Cricket schism as a member of a special Australian Cricket Board committee formed to handle the crisis. He was criticised for not airing an opinion, but he dealt with World Series Cricket far more pragmatically than other administrators. Richie Benaud described Bradman as "a brilliant administrator and businessman", warning that he was not to be underestimated. As Australian captain, Ian Chappell fought with Bradman over the issue of player remuneration in the early 1970s and has suggested that Bradman was parsimonious: > I...thought to myself, 'Ian, did you just ask Bradman to fill your wallet with money?' Bradman's harangue confirmed my suspicions that the players were going to have a hard time extracting more money from the ACB. ### Cancellation of Apartheid South Africa's Australian Cricket Tour Despite South Africa's Apartheid regime excluding black players from participating in national sports, many countries including Australia retained sporting relations with the regime until the mid 1970s. In this vein, the South African national cricket team was meant to tour Australia over the 1971–72 Australian summer. Public polls from the time suggested that, despite a group of very active protestors, around 75% of Australians wanted the tour to go ahead—believing that Australia should not interfere with South Africa's domestic politics. Bradman, as Chair of the Australian Cricket Board, was initially sympathetic to this majority position of allowing the planned tour to proceed. He expressed the view that white South African cricketers, many of whom had voiced their opposition to Apartheid and "had tried harder than our [Australian] protestors to do something about it", should not be punished for the decisions of their national government. However, seeking to understand the situation better, Bradman travelled to South Africa in June 1971. While there, Bradman met with then South African Prime Minister John Vorster. Their exchange was documeted as follows: - Bradman: "why don't you choose blacks in the team? I want to know". - Vorster: "blacks understand rugby but they don't understand the intricacies of cricket. [They] can't handle it". - Bradman: "have you heard of Garry Sobers?" Sobers, a West Indian cricketer, was regarded as perhaps the greatest cricketing all-rounder of all time, and was reportedly admired by Bradman—who had helped get Sobers out to play in South Australia the previous decade. When Bradman returned to Australia later in the year, and in the absence of any intervention by the Australian Government to prevent the tour, he argued to the other members of the Australian Cricket Board that they should cancel the tour. On behalf of the Board, Bradman made a one-line statement to the press: "We will not play them [South Africa] until they choose a team on a non-racial basis.". At the time, many disapproved of Bradman's decision to cancel to the tour. Vorster unsurprisingly decried the decision, calling it one by "anarchists, communists and fellow travellers". Even Australian Prime Minister William McMahon expressed regret at the decision, saying it had been wanted by a "great many Australians". Meanwhile, some Australian newspapers lamented that "a small violent group of trouble-makers has won the day" and that "Bradman had 'conced[ed] defeat without a ball being bowled". The decision was, however, praised in other media, and was well-received by anti-apartheid activists in South Africa. Those who appreciated Bradman's decision included a then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. After Bradman's death, Mandela prasied him on public television—stating that "he was a hero, a true hero". Although Bradman became unwell and died before the two could meet, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser gifted Mandela a signed bat from the cricketer, which read: "To Nelson Mandela—in recognition of a great, unfinished innings". ### Later years and death After his wife's death in 1997, Bradman suffered "a discernible and not unexpected wilting of spirit". The next year, on his 90th birthday, he hosted a meeting with his two favourite modern players, Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar, but he was not seen in his familiar place at the Adelaide Oval again. In an oft-recited anecdote, Tendulkar was impressed with Bradman's sharpness and sense of humour at this historic meeting: > I (Tendulkar) asked him a question: 'What would you have averaged in today's cricket?' He thought about it and said 'Maybe 70'. The natural reaction was 'Why only 70 and not 99?' He said, 'C'mon, that's not bad for a 90-year-old man.' Hospitalised with pneumonia in December 2000, he returned home in the New Year and died there on 25 February 2001, aged 92. A memorial service to mark Bradman's life was held on 25 March 2001 at St Peter's Anglican Cathedral, Adelaide. The service was attended by a host of former and current Test cricketers, as well as Australia's then prime minister, John Howard, leader of the opposition Kim Beazley and former prime minister Bob Hawke. Eulogies were given by Richie Benaud and Governor-General Sir William Deane. The service was broadcast live on ABC Television to a viewing audience of 1.45 million. A private service for family and friends was earlier held at the Centennial Park Cemetery in the suburb of Pasadena, with many people lining both Greenhill and Goodwood Roads to pay their respects as his funeral motorcade passed by. ### Legacy Cricket writer David Frith summed up the paradox of the continuing fascination with Bradman: > As the years passed, with no lessening of his reclusiveness, so his public stature continued to grow, until the sense of reverence and unquestioning worship left many of his contemporaries scratching their heads in wondering admiration. As early as 1939, Bradman had a Royal Navy ship named after him. Built as a fishing trawler in 1936, HMS Bradman was taken over by the Admiralty in 1939, but was sunk by German aircraft the following year. In the 1963 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, Bradman was selected by Neville Cardus as one of the Six Giants of the Wisden Century. This was a special commemorative selection requested by Wisden for its 100th edition. The other five players chosen were: Sydney Barnes, W. G. Grace, Jack Hobbs, Tom Richardson and Victor Trumper. On 10 December 1985, Bradman was the first of 120 inaugural inductees into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. He spoke of his philosophy for considering the stature of athletes: > When considering the stature of an athlete or for that matter any person, I set great store in certain qualities which I believe to be essential in addition to skill. They are that the person conducts his or her life with dignity, with integrity, courage, and perhaps most of all, with modesty. These virtues are totally compatible with pride, ambition, and competitiveness. Although modest about his own abilities and generous in his praise of other cricketers, Bradman was fully aware of the talents he possessed as a player; there is some evidence that he sought to influence his legacy. During the 1980s and 1990s, Bradman carefully selected the people to whom he gave interviews, assisting Michael Page, Roland Perry and Charles Williams, who all produced biographical works about him. Bradman also agreed to an extensive interview with Norman May for ABC radio, broadcast as Bradman: The Don Declares in eight 55-minute episodes during 1988. The most significant of these legacy projects was the Bradman Museum, opened in 1989 at the Bradman Oval in Bowral. This organisation was reformed in 1993 as a non-profit charitable Trust, called the Bradman Foundation. In 2010, it was expanded and rebranded as the International Cricket Hall of Fame. When the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame was created in Melbourne in 1996, Bradman was made one of its 10 inaugural members. In 2000, Bradman was selected by cricket experts as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Century. Each of the 100 members of the panel were able to select five cricketers: all 100 voted for Bradman. The ICC Cricket Hall of Fame inducted him on 19 November 2009. Bradman's life and achievements were recognised in Australia with two notable issues. Three years before he died, he became the first living Australian to be featured on an Australian postage stamp. After his death, the Australian Government produced a 20-cent coin to commemorate his life. On 27 August 2018, to celebrate 110 years since his birth, Bradman was commemorated with a Google Doodle. To mark 150 years of the Cricketers' Almanack, Wisden named him as captain of an all-time Test World XI. In 1999, Bradman was named in the six-man shortlist for BBC Sports Personality of the Century. Asteroid 2472 Bradman, discovered by Luboš Kohoutek, is named in his honour. The State Library of South Australia in Adelaide approached Bradman in the late 1960s about his transferring his personal collection of memorabilia to them. Bradman then collaborated in the creation of scrapbooks about his career which he donated to the library along with bats, balls, trophies and tape recordings detailing his career. The original scrapbooks are held by the National Library of Australia in Canberra. The Bradman Collection was formally opened in a dedicated display space at the State Library of South Australia by Prime Minister John Howard in 1998. ## Family life Bradman first met Jessie Martha Menzies in 1920 when she boarded with the Bradman family, to be closer to school in Bowral. The couple married at St Paul's Anglican Church at Burwood, Sydney on 30 April 1932. The two were devoted to each other. During their 65-year marriage, Jessie was "shrewd, reliable, selfless, and above all, uncomplicated...she was the perfect foil to his concentrated, and occasionally mercurial character". Bradman paid tribute to his wife numerous times, once saying succinctly, "I would never have achieved what I achieved without Jessie". The Bradmans lived in the same modest, suburban house in Holden Street, Kensington Park, Adelaide, for all but the first three years of their married life. They experienced personal tragedy in raising their children: their first-born son died as an infant in 1936; their second son, John (born in 1939), contracted polio; and their daughter, Shirley, born in 1941, had cerebral palsy from birth. His family name proved a burden for John Bradman; he legally changed his last name to Bradsen in 1972. Although claims were made that he became estranged from his father, it was more a matter of "the pair inhabit[ing] different worlds", and the two remained in contact through the years. After the cricketer's death, a collection of personal letters written by Bradman to his close friend Rohan Rivett between 1953 and 1977 was released and gave researchers new insights into Bradman's family life, including the strain between father and son. However, John Bradman later rejected the view that his relationship with his father was strained. Bradman's reclusiveness in later life is partly attributable to the ongoing health problems of his wife, particularly following the open-heart surgery Jessie underwent in her 60s. Lady Bradman died in 1997, aged 88, from cancer. This had a dispiriting effect on Bradman, but the relationship with his son improved, to the extent that John resolved to change his name back to Bradman. Since his father's death, John Bradman has become the spokesperson for the family and has been involved in defending the Bradman legacy in a number of disputes. The relationship between Bradman and his wider family is less clear, although nine months after Bradman's death, his nephew Paul Bradman criticised him as a "snob" and a "loner" who forgot his connections in Bowral and who failed to attend the funerals of Paul's mother and father. In addition to Bradman's two children, he was survived by three grandchildren: Greta Bradman, Tom Bradman, and Nick Bradman. Greta Bradman is an operatic soprano, psychologist, and radio broadcaster. She has released multiple albums and performed at numerous national events in Australia, including the State Memorial Service of Shane Warne. Tom Bradman worked at the Australian Department of Agriculture before taking up farming, appearing on the Australian TV show Landline, where he discussed his approach to regenerative agriculture. In 2017, Nick Bradman appeared on the front cover of the Australian newspaper The Advertiser, after attaining a university entrance score of 99.95 (eclipsing his grandfather's batting average of 99.94). He subsequently received the University Medal in law from the Australian National University. ## In popular culture Bradman's name has become an archetypal name for outstanding excellence, both within cricket and in the wider world. The term Bradmanesque has been coined and is used both within and outside cricketing circles. Steve Waugh described Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan as "the Don Bradman of bowling". Bradman has been the subject of the second-most biographies of any Australian, behind only the bushranger Ned Kelly. Bradman himself wrote four books: Don Bradman's Book: The Story of My Cricketing Life with Hints on Batting, Bowling and Fielding (1930), My Cricketing Life (1938), Farewell to Cricket (1950) and The Art of Cricket (1958). The story of the Bodyline series was retold in a 1984 television mini-series, with Gary Sweet portraying Bradman. Bradman has been immortalised in various popular songs of very different styles and eras. Here are some of the more well-known songs about him: - "Our Don Bradman", a jaunty ditty written by Jack O'Hagan and performed by Art Leonard, was recorded during 1930. - "Leaps and Bounds" / "Bradman", written and performed by Paul Kelly, appeared on the CD release of Kelly's 1987 album Under the Sun. - "The Tiger And The Don", written and performed by Ted Egan, released on the 1989 album This Land Australia and the 2003 album The Land Downunder. - "Sir Don", a 1996 tribute written by John Williamson, who performed it at Bradman's Memorial Service. - He was featured in the infamous 2007 "Eulogy Song" written by Chris Taylor of The Chaser, in which his bad temper and overall crankiness was outlined. - Greg Champion wrote and recorded the comedic song "I Was A Mate of Don Bradman" for his 2009 album Strayana. Bradman recorded several songs accompanying himself and others on piano in the early 1930s, including "Every Day Is A Rainbow Day For Me" with Jack Lumsdaine. In 2000, the Australian Government made it illegal for the names of corporations to suggest a link to "Sir Donald Bradman" if such a link does not, in fact, exist. Other entities with similar protection include the Australian and foreign governments, Saint Mary MacKillop, the Royal Family, and the Returned and Services League of Australia. In 2014, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra premiered a "multimedia musical portrait" called Our Don that had been nearly three years in the making. Greta Bradman performed during the event. ## See also - List of Test cricket records - ICC Player Rankings

Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's individual road race

Cycle race at the Beijing Olympics

The men's road race, a part of the cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics, took place on August 9 at the Urban Road Cycling Course in Beijing. It started at 11:00 China Standard Time (UTC+8), and was scheduled to last until 17:30 later that day. The 245.4-kilometre (152.5 mi) course ran north across the heart of the Beijing metropolitan area, passing such landmarks as the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square and the Beijing National Stadium. After rolling over relatively flat terrain for 78.8 km (49.0 mi) north of the Beijing city center, the route entered a decisive circuit encompassing seven loops on a 23.8 km (14.8 mi) section up and down the Badaling Pass, including ramps as steep as a 10 percent gradient. The race was won by the Spanish rider Samuel Sánchez in 6 hours, 23 minutes, 49 seconds, after a six-man breakaway group contested a sprint finish. It was the first medal in the men's individual road race for Spain. Davide Rebellin of Italy and Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, finishing second and third place with the same time as Sánchez, received silver and bronze medals respectively for the event. The hot and humid conditions were in sharp contrast to the heavy rain weathered in the women's road race the following day. The event was one of the earliest to be concluded at the 2008 Summer Olympics, taking place on the first day of competition. Concerns were raised before the Olympics about the threat of pollution in endurance sports, but no major problems were apparent in the race. In April 2009, it was announced that Rebellin had tested positive for Continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (CERA, a third-generation form of erythropoietin) during the Olympics. After his B-sample subsequently confirmed initial results, he returned his medal and repaid the prize money he had won from the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) while still maintaining his innocence. Cancellara and original fourth-place finisher Alexandr Kolobnev were later awarded new medals corresponding to their updated finishing positions. Kolobnev's bronze was Russia's first medal in the event. ## Qualification Qualification for the race was restricted to five athletes per National Olympic Committee (NOC), providing that these athletes qualified through the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) rankings, with the UCI ProTour considered to be superior to the UCI Continental Circuits. The number of qualification places allocated varied among the different UCI tours, which all maintain their own ranking system. Any NOC unable to fill its quota of athletes from the ProTour was permitted to enter athletes from one of the continental tours, and if that was not feasible, from the "B" World Championship. The number of places allocated to each tour were thus (in descending order): 70 riders from the ProTour, 38 from the Europe tour, 15 from the America tour, nine from the Asia tour, five from the Africa tour, and three from the Oceania tour. Five entrants qualified through the "B" World Championships. The final number of competitors was set to be 145, but only 143 athletes started the race. Four cyclists were scratched from the race shortly before it took place. Damiano Cunego of Italy had not yet recovered from the injuries he sustained in the 2008 Tour de France, so he was replaced by Vincenzo Nibali. Portugal's Sérgio Paulinho, the silver medalist at the 2004 event, was said to be in insufficient shape to race. After Russian Vladimir Gusev was fired by his professional team for failing an internal doping check, he was replaced in this event by Denis Menchov, who later competed in the time trial. While training earlier in the week before the race, Switzerland's Michael Albasini crashed and broke his collarbone; there was not sufficient time to find a replacement for him. ## Preview This was the 18th appearance of the event, previously held in 1896 and then at every Summer Olympics since 1936. It replaced the individual time trial event that had been held from 1912 to 1932; the time trial had been re-introduced in 1996 alongside the road race. ### Pollution issues Prior to the opening of the Games, the International Olympic Committee was keen to play down the risk that athletes faced from pollution; however, the organizing body considered rescheduling of endurance events (such as the cycling road race) if the pollution levels were too high. Athletes partaking in these events can consume 20 times the amount of oxygen as a sedentary person. A higher level of pollution in the air could adversely affect performance, damage or irritate an athlete's lungs, or exacerbate respiratory conditions, such as asthma. Independent sources showed that pollution levels were above the limit deemed safe by the World Health Organization on August 9. However, the cycling event went ahead as scheduled with no objections from the athletes. Fifty-three of the 143 cyclists pulled out during the race; however, this is not unusual (over half withdrew mid-race at the 2004 Summer Olympics). Post-race, a number of riders highlighted the punishing conditions, in particular the heat (26 °C or 79 °F) and humidity (90%), which were much higher than in Europe, where the majority of UCI ProTour races are held. Pollution, however, was not widely cited as a problem, though Stefan Schumacher of Germany, who had been considered an outside favorite for victory in the event, said the elements and the pollution played a role in his withdrawal. ### Pre-race favorites Among the pre-race favorites was the entire Spanish contingent of riders. It included two winners of Grand Tours in Alberto Contador and Carlos Sastre, along with highly regarded countrymen Alejandro Valverde, winner of the 2008 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and the reigning Spanish national road race champion, and Samuel Sánchez, who had won three stages in the 2007 Vuelta a España. They also had 2008 Tour de France points classification winner and three-time world champion Óscar Freire available to work on their behalf. Valverde was seen as the strongest threat among the Spaniards. Other medal hopefuls included the defending Olympic champion Paolo Bettini of Italy, Germany's Stefan Schumacher, and Australian Cadel Evans, twice a runner-up in the Tour de France (2007 and 2008). It was thought that members of the overall strong squads from Germany and Luxembourg could also contend for victory. The German team contained Schumacher and many veterans of Grand Tours such as Jens Voigt to work in support, while Luxembourg had the Schleck brothers Andy and Fränk, along with Kim Kirchen, all of whom had worn leader's jerseys during the 2008 Tour de France. ## Course The Urban Road Cycling Course (one of Beijing's nine temporary venues) was 102.6 km (63.8 mi) in its entirety, and the men's race was a distance of 245.4 km (152.5 mi), the longest in Olympic history. The race's starting line was located at the Yongdingmen, a reconstructed gate of Beijing's old city wall, which is a part of the Dongcheng District south of Beijing city center. The course ended at the Juyong Pass in the Changping District. `The route passed through a total of eight districts: Chongwen, Xuanwu, Dongcheng, Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, Changping, and Yanqing. The course's scenery, described by The Guardian newspaper (UK) as "visually sumptuous", included landmarks such as the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square, the Yonghe Temple, and sections of the Great Wall of China, which were passed through as the course journeyed from urban Beijing into the countryside. It also passed the architecture of the 2008 Olympics, including the Beijing National Stadium and Beijing National Aquatics Center (known colloquially as the "Bird's Nest" and "Water Cube").` The men's race layout, which differed most significantly from the women's in that it was over double its length, saw the riders make seven loops back-and-forth between the Badaling and Juyong Passes. The early sections of the race took place within central Beijing; consequently, the gradient of this part of the race was relatively flat. At approximately the 78.8 km (49.0 mi) point in the race the riders reached the Badaling section of the Great Wall, and began their first of seven 23.8 km (14.8 mi) loops. The riders encountered an increase in the gradient at this point, with the Badaling Pass gaining 338.2 metres (1,110 ft) in elevation over a distance of 12.4 km (7.7 mi) from the start of the circuit to the highest point. From there the cyclists rode over a false flat before descending a highway towards the Juyong Pass. The final 350 m (1,150 ft) of the race gave the riders a moderately steep climb to contend with, which was designed to ensure an exciting finale should several riders have been grouped together at the end of the race, as there were. Due to security regulations put in place by the Olympic organizers, no spectators were permitted to stand roadside along the course. This decision proved to be controversial: several prominent figures in cycling, including UCI president Pat McQuaid and riders Stuart O'Grady and Cadel Evans (both Australia), spoke out against it. McQuaid and O'Grady both felt that the absence of people along the course deprived the race of the atmosphere present at other cycling events, and said that it failed to take supporters' wishes into consideration. Cycling Australia's reaction to the cyclists' complaints was to request that security restrictions be eased for the time trial to follow, but they were not. ## Race The men's road race began at 11:00 local time (UTC+8) and within 3 km (1.9 mi) of the start, Horacio Gallardo (Bolivia) and Patricio Almonacid (Chile) formed a two-man breakaway. They held a maximum advantage of 15 minutes, but were never really seen as a threat, and in fact neither went on to finish the race. With no single team willing to force the pace, a 26-man breakaway formed at the 60 km (37 mi) mark, including Carlos Sastre (Spain), Kim Kirchen (Luxembourg), Jens Voigt (Germany), Roman Kreuziger (Czech Republic) and Simon Gerrans (Australia). Shortly after the race reached the finish line to begin the first of seven 23.8 km (14.8 mi) loops, Gallardo was dropped by Almonacid. The lone Chilean leader was then caught by the now 24-man chase group at the summit on the second loop, after riding solo ahead of the pack for over an hour and a half. Under the impetus of Sastre and Kreuziger in particular, the 24-strong breakaway group built their lead to over six minutes at the half-way point of the race, after four of the seven circuits. At that point, the Italian-paced main field increased its speed in order to bring them back. Aleksandr Kuschynski (Belarus) and Ruslan Pidgornyy (Ukraine) went clear of the leading group afterward and gained an advantage of a minute and 40 seconds over the Sastre group and 2 minutes, 45 seconds over the main field by the start of the fifth lap over the hilly circuit. The Sastre group was absorbed by the main field at the 60 km (37 mi) to go mark, leaving just Kuschynski and Pidgornyy out front. Not long after, shortly before the end of the fifth circuit, Marcus Ljungqvist (Sweden), Rigoberto Urán (Colombia) and Johan Van Summeren (Belgium) attacked from the peloton and reeled in Kuschynski and Pidgornyy. The next attack, one that would later be described as "audacious" and "brave", came from Christian Pfannberger (Austria), who went free of the main field toward the end of the sixth lap. His maximum advantage never grew to more than a minute, but he did stay away until well into the seventh and final lap, being caught with 20 km (12 mi) to go. Within five minutes of fierce attacks, fewer than 20 riders were left in the front group, a group that included Cadel Evans (Australia), Levi Leipheimer (United States), Santiago Botero (Colombia), and Jérôme Pineau (France), with Valverde and Bettini left behind them. Five riders, Samuel Sánchez (Spain), Michael Rogers (Australia), Davide Rebellin (Italy), Andy Schleck (Luxembourg), and Alexandr Kolobnev (Russia), came further clear from the group of now 13 due to repeated attacks from Schleck. Sánchez, Rebellin, and Schleck reached the summit of the Badaling climb, with 12.7 km (7.9 mi) to race, 10 seconds ahead of Rogers and Kolobnev, and 26 seconds ahead of the Evans group. Bettini, Valverde and Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) attacked from the main peloton and joined the Evans group at the top of the climb. The leading group's advantage over the two-man chase was 15 seconds with 10 km (6.2 mi) to go. With 5 km (3.1 mi) left, Cancellara attacked from the Evans group and caught up with the chasers that the group of three had left behind, Kolobnev and Rogers. The three of them successfully bridged the gap to the leaders with about 1 km (0.62 mi) to go, and there were six riders contesting the final sprint. Sánchez won the gold medal, Rebellin the silver, and Cancellara the bronze. ## Doping incident In April 2009, the IOC announced that six athletes had tested positive during the 2008 Summer Olympics, without mentioning names or sports. Later, rumours emerged that the athletes included two cyclists, one of them a medal winner. The Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) then confirmed that a male Italian cyclist had tested positive for Continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (CERA) during the men's road race, without identifying him. The next day, on 29 April 2009, the Committee confirmed that Davide Rebellin was an involved athlete. Rebellin's agent sent a request for the analysis of the B sample. On 8 July 2009, Rebellin, along with Stefan Schumacher, were confirmed as having tested positive. Schumacher was already serving a ban after testing positive in the 2008 Tour de France, but faced further punishment, and Rebellin subsequently had his medal removed by the UCI and the IOC. On 27 November, Rebellin returned his silver medal to CONI, per their and the UCI's request. Per UCI regulations, Cancellara and Kolobnev were moved up to second and third in the official results, but did not initially receive new medals. On December 18, 2010, Cancellara received the same physical medal initially given to Rebellin, in a ceremony held in his hometown of Ittigen, Switzerland. The medal originally given to Cancellara will in turn be given to Kolobnev. Rebellin had appealed at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the decision to remove his silver medal, but in July 2010, this was rejected. There had been controversy in the months before the men's road race when, in the aftermath of doping revelations at the Tour de France, International Olympic Committee vice-president Thomas Bach had suggested that the men's road race's place in the Olympics should be reconsidered, and said that the credibility of the sport had been damaged; although he clarified that there was no immediate threat. Pat McQuaid had reacted angrily to these comments, saying, "Why should they [the majority of cyclists] be threatened because of a few bad apples?" ## Final classification A total of 142 riders have been qualified in the event at these Games. Most of them are not expected to finish one-day races, having worked in support for their teams (in this case, nations) to place their riders with better climbing skills in good positions once the mountainous part of a course begins. Many of these riders also sought to conserve themselves for the time trial that was to come. Additionally, if a rider was lapped by the race leader on the Badaling circuit, he would be forced to stop. The notation "s.t." indicates that the rider crossed the finish line in the same group as the one receiving the time above him, and was therefore credited with the same finishing time. Source: Official results Notes:

Eric Harrison (RAAF officer)

Australian pilot (1886–1945)

Eric Harrison (10 August 1886 – 5 September 1945) was an Australian aviator who made the country's first military flight, and helped lay the foundations of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in Victoria, Harrison was a flying instructor in Britain when, in 1912, he answered the Australian Defence Department's call for pilots to form an aviation school. Along with Henry Petre, he established Australia's first air base at Point Cook, Victoria, and its inaugural training unit, the Central Flying School (CFS), before making his historic flight in March 1914. Following the outbreak of World War I, when Petre went on active service with the Mesopotamian Half Flight, Harrison took charge of instructing student pilots of the Australian Flying Corps at CFS, and maintaining its fleet of obsolescent aircraft. Harrison transferred to the RAAF as one of its founding members in 1921, and spent much of the inter-war period in technical services and air accident investigation. Promoted to group captain in 1935, he retired from the Air Force five years later when his post of Director of Aeronautical Inspection was transferred to the public service. He continued to serve in the same capacity as a civilian until his sudden death from a stroke at the age of fifty-nine, just after the end of World War II. Harrison's technical abilities and association with military flying from its earliest days in Australia earned him the title of "Father of the RAAF" for many years, until the mantle was assumed by Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams. ## Early career Born on 10 August 1886 at Clinkers Hill near Castlemaine, Victoria, Eric Harrison was the son of printer and stationer Joseph Harrison, and his English wife Ann Ingamels. He attended Castlemaine Grammar School before starting work as a motor mechanic. Keen to fly from the first time he saw an aeroplane, he travelled to Britain in March 1911 and trained as a pilot at the Bristol School on Salisbury Plain. Six months later, having accumulated some thirty minutes' flight time, he qualified for his Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate, becoming only the third Australian to do so. Gaining employment as an instructor for Bristol, he taught flying on behalf of the company in Spain and Italy, as well as in Halberstadt, Germany, where he became aware first-hand of that country's militarism; some of the students he trained and examined later served as pilots in the Luftstreitkräfte during World War I. In December 1911, the Australian Defence Department advertised in Britain for "two competent mechanists and aviators" to establish a flying corps and training school in Australia. The English-born Henry Petre, a former solicitor employed by Handley Page, and Harry Busteed, an Australian who was Bristol's chief test pilot, successfully applied. Petre was commissioned with the honorary rank of lieutenant in the Australian Military Forces (AMF) on 6 August 1912, but Busteed withdrew his application in October. Harrison took Busteed's place, gaining his commission as an honorary lieutenant on 16 December. Though his new salary of £400 was little improvement on what he was earning in Britain, Harrison was happy to have an excuse to return home. Petre selected Point Cook, Victoria, to become the site for the AMF's proposed Central Flying School (CFS) in March 1913; meanwhile Harrison remained in Britain temporarily, ordering the facility's complement of aircraft including two Deperdussin monoplanes, two Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 biplanes, and a Bristol Boxkite for initial training. Harrison oversaw the construction of the aircraft and their testing, personally flying each one. He subsequently departed Britain aboard RMS Otway and arrived in Western Australia on 27 May. Over the following months, Petre and Harrison planned the development of the Point Cook airfield and established CFS with themselves as instructors, augmented by four mechanics and three other staff. Harrison made Australia's first military flight in the Boxkite on Sunday, 1 March 1914, followed later that day by another in the same aircraft with Petre as passenger and then a third by himself in a Deperdussin. News of these flights was only released on 3 March and a first official flight, with the Chief of the General Staff, Brigadier Josef Gordon as passenger, was scheduled for two days later. Petre believed conditions on 5 March were too windy but Gordon pressed for the flight to go ahead, and Harrison took him in the Boxkite. The wind, along with the aeroplane's low power and the weight of its passengers, almost led to the Boxkite crashing on take-off and prevented it gaining more than 30 feet (9 m) in altitude before Harrison terminated the flight. Petre crashed a Deperdussin on 9 March and a concerned Minister for Defence, Edward Millen, made a surprise visit to Point Cook two days later to inspect the wreckage. Harrison helped mollify Millen with a display in the Boxkite, followed by a short flight with the minister's daughter, Ruby, as passenger. On 29 June, Harrison married Kathleen Prendergast, daughter of the future Premier of Victoria, George Prendergast, at St Mary's Catholic Church in West Melbourne. ## World War I Its coterie of personnel by now being referred to as the Australian Flying Corps (AFC), CFS commenced its first course on 17 August 1914, two weeks after the outbreak of World War I. The students included Captain Thomas White and Lieutenant Richard Williams. Harrison provided initial training to solo level and Petre advanced instruction. In November, Harrison was given command of a flying unit to support the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in German New Guinea. The unit's aircraft consisted of a B.E.2 and a Farman seaplane, which were crated and despatched via rail and then troopship to Madang. With little in the way of enemy resistance the aircraft were never assembled in New Guinea and Harrison had to return in January 1915 without leading the first Australian airmen into combat, a distinction that instead went to Petre as commander of the Mesopotamian Half Flight later that year. The New Guinea expedition was not publicised until it was over, Harrison's cover story for his time away from Point Cook being a honeymoon with his new wife. Harrison was promoted to honorary captain on 1 April 1915. With Petre on active duty, Harrison took on the main responsibility for providing basic flying training to the pilots of the first three squadrons to be formed in Australia for overseas service. Many of his students went on to play a prominent role in the future Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), including Bill Anderson, Harry Cobby, Adrian Cole, Frank McNamara, Lawrence Wackett, and Henry Wrigley. Having graduated twenty-four new pilots by the end of 1915, Harrison was able to establish the first AFC squadron, designated No. 67 (Australian) Squadron, Royal Flying Corps; it was commonly known as No. 1 Squadron AFC from its inception, and officially so from 1 January 1918. The unit departed for Egypt in March 1916 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Edgar Reynolds. Nos. 3 and 4 Squadrons AFC were formed at Point Cook in late 1916 to operate in France following advanced training in England. Augmenting his instructional and administrative duties, Harrison put his mechanical abilities to use initiating the building of aero engines in Australia and maintaining CFS's complement of airframes; according to Wackett, only Harrison had the skill to keep the obsolescent machines in the air. He was appointed officer-in-charge of CFS in June 1917 with the rank of temporary major; the rank became substantive on 9 September 1918. That month, CFS became part of the Australian Imperial Force, helping to facilitate exchange between AFC staff in Australia and overseas. Harrison handed over command of CFS to Major William Sheldon, former commanding officer of Nos. 2 and 4 Squadrons. ## Interbellum and World War II Harrison began a long association with engineering and air safety when he was posted to Britain for secondment to the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate towards the end of World War I, departing Australia on 22 October 1918 and returning on 9 January 1920. He transferred as a flight lieutenant (honorary squadron leader) to the newly formed Australian Air Force on 31 March 1921, becoming one of its twenty-one founding officers; the adjective "Royal" was added to the service's name in August that year. His initial appointment was as Officer Commanding Motor Transport Repair Section, No. 1 Aircraft Depot. Dissatisfied with his RAAF rank considering his leading position in the pre-war Central Flying School, Harrison appealed for greater seniority. As a result, he was appointed Air Liaison Officer to the Air Ministry in London, with promotion to the substantive rank of squadron leader, on 1 July. Returning to Australia on 22 February 1927, he was appointed Assistant Director of Technical Services on 3 March, and in May helped form Australia's Air Accident Investigation Committee (AAIC). On 12 March 1928 he became RAAF Director of Aeronautical Inspection, receiving promotion to wing commander on 1 July. Harrison's position took him throughout the country, inspecting equipment and investigating the causes of air crashes. Among the accidents he investigated were the disappearance of the Southern Cloud in March 1931, the loss of two de Havilland DH.86s in a matter of weeks in 1934, and the crash of an Airlines of Australia Stinson in February 1937. Although the Southern Cloud and DH.86 inquiries were public, AAIC inquiries were generally held in camera, a practice Harrison defended to the media on the grounds that witnesses were more forthcoming in private. Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1935, Harrison took charge of the Australian government's resources committee for aircraft, aero engines, and motor transport, one of several subcommittees on the Defence Resources Board set up to investigate and report on the readiness of Australian industry to provide munitions for defence in the event of international conflict. He was one of the recipients of the King's Jubilee Medal, announced on 6 May. In 1937, Harrison travelled to Britain and the United States for further study of accident investigation methods, as well as aircraft production. He was a member of the court of inquiry into the crash on 25 October 1938 of the Douglas DC-2 airliner Kyeema, which overshot Essendon airport in low cloud, killing all fourteen passengers and four crew members. The inquiry's report singled out Major Melville Langslow, Finance Member on both the Civil Aviation Board and the RAAF Air Board, for criticism over cost-cutting measures that had held up trials of safety beacons designed for such eventualities. According to Air Force historian Chris Coulthard-Clark, when Langslow was appointed Secretary at the Department of Air in November the following year, he went out of his way to "make life difficult" for Harrison, causing "bitterness and friction within the department", and prompting the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Vice Marshal Stanley Goble, to take steps to shield the inspector from the new Secretary's ire. Harrison held the position of Director of Aeronautical Inspection throughout World War II, his staff totalling more than 1,200 by 1945. The number of inspectors increased significantly as local Bristol Beaufort production got under way, and inspection areas were established in mainland capital cities. A reorganisation of the directorate along public service lines in 1940 permitted qualified civilian engineers to be recruited for work that required increasing technical expertise, without them having to join the Air Force. Harrison retired from the RAAF on 12 April with the rank of group captain and permission to continue wearing his service uniform. The following day he was reappointed Director of Aeronautical Inspection under the Department of Air. In July, Harrison proposed the construction of a series of test houses to help decentralise chemical, mechanical and metrological testing of materials used in the manufacture of munitions that previously had to go through either the Munitions Supply Laboratories or the National Standards Laboratory. The result was a major improvement in the speed of testing and, according to the official history of Australia in the war, "a fuller use of the country's scientific and technical manpower". Harrison's wife Kathleen was President of the Air Force Auxiliaries Committee during the war, overseeing welfare organisations that assisted RAAF personnel and their families, and members of the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF). Their daughter and only child, Greta, joined the WAAAF and by the end of the war was ranked flight officer. ## Legacy On 5 September 1945, soon after the war ended, Harrison died suddenly of hypertensive cerebrovascular disease at his home in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton; he was survived by his wife and daughter, and cremated. The Minister for Air, Arthur Drakeford, commented that "all members of the service, and, indeed, all Australians interested in aviation, must feel his loss as the snapping of one of the last links with the pioneer days of flying". One of the original Deperdussins that Harrison ordered and helped assemble for the Central Flying School in 1914 later went on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. On 1 March 2014, as part of the Australian Centenary of Military Aviation Air Show at Point Cook, a replica Boxkite took to the air in a re-enactment of Harrison's historic first flight at the airfield. Despite his accomplishments in overseeing the training of every student pilot who served in the Australian Flying Corps during World War I, Harrison received no decorations or other official recognition, prompting Group Captain Mark Lax, at the 1999 RAAF History Conference, to describe him as "perhaps the unluckiest of the entire AFC ... an unsung hero". Lax added that, as an instructor, Harrison's "caring, personal approach resulted in a fatality free run with high percentage graduation – surely a remarkable achievement for the time". Until the title eventually settled on Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, Harrison was generally considered to be the "Father of the RAAF". His technical expertise, long association with Australian military aviation as a founder member of the AFC and the RAAF, and stronger personality tended to overshadow the part played by Henry Petre, whom historian Douglas Gillison considered "equally entitled" to such an accolade. Reviewing the contributions of Petre and Harrison in his volume of The Australian Centenary History of Defence in 2001, Alan Stephens concluded that "perhaps any judgement would not only be moot but also gratuitous, as by circumstance and achievement both men properly belong in the pantheon of the RAAF".

Australian Air Corps

Australian military aviation unit (1920–21)

The Australian Air Corps (AAC) was a temporary formation of the Australian military that existed in the period between the disbandment of the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) of World War I and the establishment of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in March 1921. Raised in January 1920, the AAC was commanded by Major William Anderson, a former AFC pilot. Many of the AAC's members were also from the AFC and would go on to join the RAAF. Although part of the Australian Army, for most of its existence the AAC was overseen by a board of senior officers that included members of the Royal Australian Navy. Following the disbandment of the AFC, the AAC was a stop-gap measure intended to remain in place until the formation of a permanent and independent Australian air force. The corps' primary purpose was to maintain assets of the Central Flying School at Point Cook, Victoria, but several pioneering activities also took place under its auspices: AAC personnel set an Australian altitude record that stood for a decade, made the first non-stop flight between Sydney and Melbourne, and undertook the country's initial steps in the field of aviation medicine. The AAC operated fighters, bombers and training aircraft, including some of the first examples of Britain's Imperial Gift to arrive in Australia. As well as personnel, the RAAF inherited Point Cook and most of its initial equipment from the AAC. ## Establishment and control In December 1919, the remnants of the wartime Australian Flying Corps (AFC) were disbanded, and replaced on 1 January 1920 by the Australian Air Corps (AAC), which was, like the AFC, part of the Australian Army. Australia's senior airman, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, was overseas, and Major William Anderson was appointed commander of the AAC, a position that also put him in charge of the Central Flying School (CFS) at Point Cook, Victoria. As Anderson was on sick leave at the time of the appointment, Major Rolf Brown temporarily assumed command; Anderson took over on 19 February. CFS remained the AAC's sole unit, and Point Cook its only air base. The AAC was an interim organisation intended to exist until the establishment of a permanent Australian air service. The decision to create such a service had been made in January 1919, amid competing proposals by the Army and the Royal Australian Navy for separate forces under their respective jurisdictions. Budgetary constraints and arguments over administration and control led to ongoing delays in the formation of an independent air force. By direction of the Chief of the General Staff, Major General Gordon Legge, in November 1919, the AAC's prime purpose was to ensure existing aviation assets were maintained; Legge later added that it should also perform suitable tasks such as surveying air routes. The Chief of the Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Sir Percy Grant, objected to the AAC's being under Army control, and argued that an air board should be formed to oversee the AAC and the proposed Australian air force. A temporary air board first met on 29 January 1920, the Army being represented by Williams and Brigadier General Thomas Blamey, and the Navy by Captain Wilfred Nunn and Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Goble, a former member of Britain's Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) then seconded to the Navy Office. Williams was given responsibility for administering the AAC on behalf of the board. A permanent Air Board overseen by an Air Council was formed on 9 November 1920; these bodies were made responsible for administering the AAC from 22 November. ## Personnel Most members of the AAC were former AFC personnel. In August 1919, several senior AFC pilots, including Lieutenant Colonel Oswald Watt, Major Anderson, and Captain Roy Phillipps, were appointed to serve on a committee examining applications for the AAC. Some of the staffing decisions were controversial. At least three officers at the CFS, including the commanding officer, were not offered appointments in the new service. Roy King, the AFC's second highest-scoring fighter ace after Harry Cobby, refused an appointment in the AAC because it had not yet offered a commission to Victoria Cross recipient Frank McNamara. In a letter dated 30 January 1920, King wrote, "I feel I must forfeit my place in favor (sic) of this very good and gallant officer"; McNamara received a commission in the AAC that April. Other former AFC members who took up appointments in the AAC included Captains Adrian Cole, Henry Wrigley, Frank Lukis, and Lawrence Wackett. Captain Hippolyte "Kanga" De La Rue, an Australian who flew with the RNAS during the war, was granted a commission in the AAC because a specialist seaplane pilot was required for naval cooperation work. The corps' initial establishment was nine officers—commanding officer, adjutant, workshop commander, test pilot, four other pilots, and medical officer—and seventy other ranks. In March 1920, to cope with the imminent arrival of new aircraft and other equipment, approval was given to increase this complement by a further seven officers and thirty-six other ranks. The following month the establishment was increased by fifty-four to make a total of 160 other ranks. An advertising campaign was employed to garner applicants. According to The Age, applicants needed to be aged between eighteen and forty-five, and returned soldiers were preferred; all positions were "temporary" and salaries, including uniform allowance and rations, ranged from £194 to £450. As the AAC was an interim formation, no unique uniform was designed for its members. Within three weeks of the AAC being raised, a directive came down from CFS that the organisation's former AFC staff should wear out their existing uniforms, and that any personnel requiring new uniforms should acquire "AIF pattern, as worn by the AFC". The AAC suffered two fatalities. On 23 September 1920, two Airco DH.9A bombers recently delivered from Britain undertook a search for the schooner Amelia J., which had disappeared on a voyage from Newcastle to Hobart. Anderson and Sergeant Herbert Chester flew one of the DH.9As, and Captain Billy Stutt and Sergeant Abner Dalzell the other. Anderson's aircraft landed near Hobart in the evening, having failed to locate the lost schooner, but Stutt and Dalzell were missing; their DH.9A was last sighted flying through cloud over Bass Strait. A court of inquiry determined the aircraft had crashed, and that the DH.9As may not have had adequate preparation time for their task, which it attributed to the low staffing levels at CFS. The court proposed compensation of £550 for Stutt's family and £248 for Dalzell's—the maximum amounts payable under government regulations—as the men had been on duty at the time of their deaths; Federal Cabinet increased these payments three-fold. Wreckage that may have belonged to the Amelia J. was found at Flinders Island the following year. ## Equipment The AAC's initial complement of aircraft included twenty Avro 504K trainers and twelve Sopwith Pup fighters that had been delivered to CFS in 1919, as well as a Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 and F.E.2, and a Bristol Scout. Seven of the 504Ks and one of the Pups were written off during the AAC's existence, leaving thirteen and eleven on strength, respectively. The B.E.2 had been piloted by Wrigley and Arthur Murphy in 1919 on the first flight from Melbourne to Darwin, and was allotted to what became the Australian War Memorial in August 1920; the F.E.2 was sold in November 1920, while the Scout remained on strength and was still being flown by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1923. In February 1920, the Vickers Vimy bomber recently piloted by Ross and Keith Smith on the first flight from England to Australia was flown to Point Cook, where it joined the strength of the AAC. In March 1920, Australia began receiving 128 aircraft with associated spares and other equipment as part of Britain's Imperial Gift to Dominions seeking to establish their own post-war air services. The aircraft included Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 fighters, Airco DH.9 and DH.9A bombers, and Avro 504s. Most remained crated for eventual use by the yet-to-be formed RAAF, but several of each type were assembled and employed by the AAC. One of the DH.9As was lost with the disappearance of Stutt and Dalzell in September 1920. ## Notable flights On 17 June 1920, Cole, accompanied by De La Rue, flew a DH.9A to an altitude of 27,000 feet (8,200 m), setting an Australian record that stood for more than ten years. The effects of hypoxia exhibited by Cole and De La Rue intrigued the medical officer, Captain Arthur Lawrence, who subsequently made observations during his own high-altitude flight piloted by Anderson; this activity has been credited as marking the start of aviation medicine in Australia. Later that month, flying an Avro 504L floatplane, De La Rue became the first person to land an aircraft on the Yarra River in Victoria. On 22 July, Williams, accompanied by Warrant Officer Les Carter, used a DH.9A to make the first non-stop flight from Sydney to Melbourne. A few days earlier, Williams and Wackett had flown two DH.9As to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, to investigate the possibility of taking some of the school's graduates into the air corps, a plan that came to fruition after the formation of the RAAF. Between July and November 1920, trials of the Avro 504L took place on the Navy's flagship, HMAS Australia, and later aboard the light cruiser HMAS Melbourne. The trials on Melbourne, which operated in the waters off New Guinea and northern Australia, demonstrated that the Avro was not suited to tropical conditions as its engine lacked the necessary power and its skin deteriorated rapidly; Williams recommended that activity cease until Australia acquired a purpose-designed seaplane. The AAC performed several tasks in connection with the Prince of Wales' tour of Australia in 1920. In May, the AAC was required to escort the Prince's ship, HMS Renown, into Port Melbourne, and then to fly over the royal procession along St Kilda Road. The AAC had more aircraft than pilots available, so Williams gained permission from the Minister for Defence to augment AAC aircrew with former AFC pilots seeking to volunteer their services for the events. In August, the AAC was called upon at the last minute to fly the Prince's mail from Port Augusta, South Australia, to Sydney before he boarded Renown for the voyage back to Britain. During the Second Peace Loan, which commenced in August 1920, the AAC undertook a cross-country program of tours and exhibition flying to promote the sale of government bonds. Again Williams enlisted the services of former AFC personnel to make up for a shortfall in the number of AAC pilots and mechanics available to prepare and fly the nineteen aircraft allotted to the program. Activities included flyovers at sporting events, leaflet drops over Melbourne, and what may have been Australia's first aerial derby—at Serpentine, Victoria, on 27 August. Poor weather hindered some of the program, and four aircraft were lost in accidents, though no aircrew were killed. The Second Peace Loan gave AAC personnel experience in a variety of flying conditions, and the air service gained greater exposure to the Australian public. ## Disbandment and legacy On 15 March 1921, the Brisbane Courier reported that the AAC would disband on 30 March, and be succeeded by a new air force. The Australian Air Force was formed on 31 March, inheriting Point Cook and most of its initial personnel and equipment from the AAC. The adjective "Royal" was added to "Australian Air Force" that August. Several officers associated with the AAC, including Williams, Anderson, Wrigley and McNamara, went on to achieve high rank in the Air Force. According to the RAAF's Pathfinder bulletin, the AAC "kept valuable aviation skills alive" until a permanent air force could be established. The corps was, further, "technically separate from the Army and Navy; its director answered to the Minister for Defence, through the Air Council. In effect, the AAC was Australia's first independent air force, albeit an interim one."

Mascarene grey parakeet

Extinct parrot from Mauritius and Réunion

The Mascarene grey parakeet, Mauritius grey parrot, or Thirioux's grey parrot (Psittacula bensoni), is an extinct species of parrot which was endemic to the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Réunion in the western Indian Ocean. It has been classified as a member of the tribe Psittaculini, along with other parrots from the Islands. Subfossil bones of the Mascarene grey parakeet found on Mauritius were first described in 1973 as belonging to a smaller relative of the broad-billed parrot in the genus Lophopsittacus. Apart from their size, the bones were very similar to those of other Mascarene parrots. The subfossils were later connected with 17th- and 18th-century descriptions of small grey parrots on Mauritius and Réunion, together with a single illustration published in a journal describing a voyage in 1602, and the species was instead reassigned to the genus Psittacula. The Mascarene grey parakeet was grey, had a long tail, and was larger than other species of the genus Psittacula, which are usually green. The grey parrots were said to be easy to hunt, as the capture of one would result in its to summon the whole flock. They were also considered to be crop pests, and being such easy prey meant that they were extensively hunted. Coupled with deforestation, this pushed them into extinction. This had happened by the 1730s on Réunion and by the 1760s on Mauritius. ## Taxonomy In 1973, English ornithologist Daniel T. Holyoak described some small parrot bones that he had discovered among a collection of broad-billed parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus) subfossils in the Zoology Museum of Cambridge University. These remains had been collected in the early 20th century by French amateur naturalist Louis Etienne Thirioux, who had found them in a cave on Le Pouce mountain, on the Mascarene Island of Mauritius. They were placed in the zoology museum by 1908. Apart from their size and robustness, Holyoak did not find the bones to be distinct from those of the Mascarene parrot genera Lophopsittacus, Mascarinus (the Mascarene parrot), Necropsittacus (the Rodrigues parrot), and Psittacula (which had two or three other species inhabiting the Mascarene Islands). Because of their similarities, Holyoak considered all these genera to be closely related. Holyoak provisionally placed the new species in the same genus as the broad-billed parrot, naming it Lophopsittacus bensoni; the name honours English ornithologist Constantine W. Benson, for his work on birds from the Indian Ocean, and in classifying bird collections at Cambridge. Holyoak also mentioned the possibility that the remains could represent a small subspecies of Necropsittacus or a wide-beaked form of Mascarinus, but maintained that they were best considered as belonging to a distinct species. The holotype specimen is a mandibular symphysis, with the specimen number UMZC 577a. Other known remains include upper mandibles, a palatine bone, and tarsometatarsi. The species has since been excavated from the Mare aux Songes swamp on Mauritius, from which subfossils of most of the other endemic bird species have been identified as well. Old, vague accounts of several different now-extinct Mascarene parrots have created much confusion for the scientists who subsequently examined them. In 1967, American ornithologist James Greenway speculated that 17th- and 18th-century reports of then-unidentified grey parrots on Mauritius referred to the broad-billed parrot. In 1987, English ecologist Anthony S. Cheke correlated the L. bensoni subfossils with the grey parrots reported from Mauritius and Réunion, which had previously been ignored, or considered references to broad-billed parrots. Further study of contemporary accounts indicates that the broad-billed parrot was not grey, but had multiple colours. In 2007, the English palaeontologist Julian P. Hume reclassified L. bensoni as a member of the genus Psittacula, as he found it to be generically distinct from Lophopsittacus, but morphologically similar to the Alexandrine parakeet (Psittacula eupatria). Hume also pointed out that an engraving accompanying the 1648 published version of Dutch captain Willem van West-Zanen's journal may be the only definite depiction of this species. The engraving shows the killing of dodos (depicted as penguin-like), a dugong, and parrots on Mauritius in 1602; the depicted method of catching parrots matches that used on Mascarene grey parakeets according to contemporary accounts. That the parrots were grey was mentioned in the journal's text but not in the caption of the engraving. Hume coined the new common name "Thirioux's grey parrot" in honour of the original collector. The IOC World Bird List instead used the common name "Mascarene grey parakeet". The population of grey parrots described from the island of Réunion (referred to as Psittacula cf. bensoni by Hume) is thought to have been conspecific with that on Mauritius. Until subfossils of P. bensoni are found on Réunion, it cannot be confirmed whether the grey parrots of the two islands belonged to the same species. In the 1860s, French naturalists Charles Coquerel and Auguste Vinson suggested these could have been parrots of the genus Coracopsis, but fossils of neither that genus nor Psittacula have ever been found on Réunion. Whilst Coracopsis parrots are known to have been introduced to that island in the 1700s, a population did not become established. While no live or dead Mascarene grey parakeets are known with certainty to have been exported, Hume has suggested that a brown parrot specimen—once housed in Cabinet du Roi but now lost—may have been a discoloured old Mascarene grey parakeet, or perhaps a lesser vasa parrot (Coracopsis nigra). This specimen was described by French naturalist Comte de Buffon in 1779. Cheke and Hume suggested in 2008 that Mascarene grey parakeets did not reach Europe because they were considered unimpressive or had too specialised a diet. ### Evolution Based on morphological features, the Alexandrine parakeet has been proposed as the founder population for all Psittacula species on Indian Ocean islands, with new populations settling during the species' southwards colonisation from its native South Asia. Features of that species gradually disappear in species further away from its range. Many endemic Mascarene birds, including the dodo, are descended from South Asian ancestors, and Hume has proposed that this may also be the case for all the parrots there. Sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene, so it was possible for species to colonise some of these less isolated islands. Although most extinct parrot species of the Mascarenes are poorly known, subfossil remains show that they shared common features such as enlarged heads and jaws, reduced pectoral bones, and robust leg bones. Hume has suggested that they all have a common origin in the radiation of the tribe Psittaculini, basing this theory on morphological features and the fact that parrots from that group have managed to colonise many isolated islands in the Indian Ocean. The Psittaculini could have invaded the area several times, as many of the species were so specialised that they may have evolved significantly on hotspot islands before the Mascarenes emerged from the sea. Other members of the genus Psittacula from the Mascarenes include the extant echo parakeet (Psittacula eques) of Mauritius and formerly Réunion, and Newton's parakeet (Psittacula exsul) of Rodrigues. Genetic studies in the early 21st century found the genus Psittacula to be paraphyletic (an unnatural grouping excluding some of its subgroups), with for example the Mascarene parrot nested within it. To solve the issue, the German ornithologist Michael P. Braun and colleagues proposed in 2016 and 2019 that Psittacula should be split into multiple genera. They therefore placed the echo and Newton's parakeets, from which DNA could be extracted, in the genus Alexandrinus instead, and retained the Mascarene parrot in Mascarinus. ## Description Contemporary accounts describe the Mascarene grey parakeet as a grey, long-tailed parrot. Subfossils show that its was about 29% longer than that of the sympatric echo parakeet, and comparatively broad, since the rami of each half of the mandible were deflected more outwards to the sides. Members of the Psittacula commonly have large, red beaks, and long feathers, with the central ones being the longest. It also differed from its congeners in other osteological details. It was skeletally similar to the Alexandrine parakeet, but some of its bones were larger and more robust. Its colouration also separated it from all other members of Psittacula, the majority of which are green or partially green. Based on subfossils, the Mascarene grey parakeet was smaller than the broad-billed parrot and the Rodrigues parrot, but similar in size to the Mascarene parrot, though with a wider beak. The mandibular symphysis (central jaw ridge) was 2.7–2.9 mm (0.11–0.11 in) thick along the mid-line, the palatine (part of the palate) was 31.1 mm (1.22 in), and the (bone in the lower leg) was 22–22.5 mm (0.87–0.89 in). The grey parrots from Réunion were described as being larger than the sympatric echo parakeet. ## Behaviour and ecology According to Cheke and Hume, the anatomy of the Mascarene grey parakeet suggests that its habits were largely terrestrial, and it may have eaten the fruits of the hurricane palm and the bottle palm, due to their abundance. Like the extinct Mauritian duck and the Mascarene coot, it appears that the Mascarene grey parakeet inhabited both Mauritius and Réunion. Both populations were said to be easy to hunt by capturing one individual and making it call out, which would summon an entire flock. Van West-Zanen, who visited Mauritius in 1602, was the first to mention grey parrots there, and he also described the hunting methods used: > ... some of the people went bird hunting. They could grab as many birds as they wished and could catch them by hand. It was an entertaining sight to see. The grey parrots are especially tame and if one is caught and made to cry out, soon hundreds of the birds fly around ones’ ears, which were then hit to the ground with little sticks. Dutch sailor Willem Ysbrandtszoon Bontekoe was on Réunion in 1618, and described the same behaviour, in the first account of the grey parrots there: > Coming further inland we found [a] great number of geese, doves, grey parrots and other birds, also many land-turtles... And what we most did marvel at, when we held one of the parrots and other birds and squeezed it till it screamed, there came all the others from thereabout as if they would free it and let themselves be caught as well, so we had enough of them to eat. In 1705, French pilot engineer Jean Feuilley gave a more detailed description of the parrots of Réunion and their ecology: > There are several sorts of parrot, of different sizes and colours. Some are the size of a hen, grey, the beak red [Mascarene parrot]; others the same colour the size of a pigeon [Mascarene grey parakeet], and yet others, smaller, are green [echo parakeet]. There are great quantities, especially in the Sainte-Suzanne area and on the mountainsides. They are very good to eat, especially when they are fat, which is from the month of June until the month of September, because at that time the trees produce a certain wild seed that these birds eat. Many other endemic species of Mauritius and Réunion were lost after the arrival of humans, so that the ecosystems of these islands are severely damaged and hard to reconstruct. Before humans arrived, the islands were entirely covered in forests, very little of which remains today, because of deforestation. The surviving endemic fauna is still seriously threatened. On Mauritius, the Mascarene grey parakeet lived alongside other recently extinct birds such as the dodo, the red rail, the broad-billed parrot, the Mauritius blue pigeon, the Mauritius scops owl, the Mascarene coot, the Mauritian shelduck, the Mauritian duck, and the Mauritius night heron. On Réunion, it lived alongside the Réunion ibis, the hoopoe starling, the Mascarene parrot, the local subspecies of the echo parakeet, the Réunion swamphen, the Réunion scops owl, the Réunion night heron, and the Réunion pink pigeon. ## Extinction To the sailors who visited the Mascarene Islands from 1598 onwards, the fauna was mainly interesting from a culinary standpoint. Of the eight or so parrot species endemic to the Mascarenes, only the echo parakeet has survived. The others likely all vanished due to a combination of extensive hunting and deforestation. Being easily caught, the Mascarene grey parakeet was often hunted in abundance by early visitors to Mauritius and Réunion. As the parrots fattened themselves from June to September, they were particularly sought after at this time of the year. An account by Dutch admiral Steven van der Hagen from 1606 even suggests that the grey parrots of Mauritius were sometimes killed for amusement. In the 1720s, French traveller Sieur Dubois stated that the grey parrots on Réunion were especially sought after during their fat season, and also claimed they were crop-pests: > Grey parrots, as good [to eat] as the pigeons... All the birds of this island have their season at different times, being six months in the low country and six months in the mountains when returning, they are very fat and good to eat... The sparrows [Foudia], grey parrots, pigeons and other birds, bats [Pteropus sp.], cause plenty of damage, some to cereals others to fruit. That these birds were said to damage crops probably contributed to their being hunted. The French settlers began to clear forests using the slash-and-burn technique in the 1730s, which in itself would have had a large effect on the population of parrots and other animals that nest in tree cavities. The grey parrots appear to have been common on Mauritius until the 1750s in spite of the pressure from humans, but since they were last mentioned by French colonist Charpentier de Cossigny in 1759 (published in 1764), they probably became extinct shortly after this time. The grey parrots of Réunion were last mentioned in 1732, also by Cossigny. This final account gives an insight as to how he regarded the culinary quality of parrots from Réunion: > The woods are full of parrots, either completely grey [Mascarene grey parrot] or completely green [echo parakeet]. They were eaten a lot formerly, the grey especially, but both are always lean and very tough whatever sauce one puts on them. The 1648 engraving possibly depicting this species was captioned with a Dutch poem, here in English naturalist Hugh Strickland's 1848 translation: > > For food the seamen hunt the flesh of feathered fowl, They tap the palms, and round-rumped dodos they destroy, The parrot's life they spare that he may peep and howl, And thus his fellows to imprisonment decoy.

Francis Walsingham

English spy and politician (c. 1532–1590)

Sir Francis Walsingham (c. 1532 – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. Walsingham rose from relative obscurity to become one of the small coterie who directed the Elizabethan state, overseeing foreign, domestic and religious policy. He served as English ambassador to France in the early 1570s and witnessed the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As principal secretary, he supported exploration, colonization, the use of England's maritime strength and the plantation of Ireland. He worked to bring Scotland and England together. Overall, his foreign policy demonstrated a new understanding of the role of England as a maritime Protestant power with intercontinental trading ties. He oversaw operations that penetrated Spanish military preparation, gathered intelligence from across Europe, disrupted a range of plots against Elizabeth and secured the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. ## Origins and early life Francis Walsingham was born around 1532, probably at Foots Cray, near Chislehurst in Kent, the only son of William Walsingham (died 1534), a successful and well-connected London lawyer who served as a member of the commission appointed to investigate the estates of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1530. William's elder brother was Sir Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower of London. Francis's mother was Joyce Denny, a daughter of the courtier Sir Edmund Denny of Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, and a sister of the courtier Sir Anthony Denny, the principal Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII. After the death of her first husband she married the courtier Sir John Carey in 1538. Carey's brother William was the husband of Mary Boleyn, the elder sister of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII. Of Francis's five sisters, Mary married Sir Walter Mildmay, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer for over 20 years, and Elizabeth married the parliamentarian Peter Wentworth. Francis Walsingham matriculated at King's College, Cambridge, in 1548 with many other Protestants but as an undergraduate of high social status did not sit for a degree. From 1550 or 1551, he travelled in continental Europe, returning to England by 1552 to enrol at Gray's Inn, one of the qualifying bodies for English lawyers. Upon the death in 1553 of Henry VIII's successor, Edward VI, Edward's Catholic half-sister Mary became queen. Many wealthy Protestants, such as John Foxe and John Cheke, fled England, and Walsingham was among them. He continued his studies in law at the universities of Basel and Padua, where he was elected to the governing body by his fellow students in 1555. ## Rise to power Mary I died in May 1558 and was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth. Walsingham returned to England and through the support of one of his fellow former exiles, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, he was elected to Elizabeth's first parliament as the member for Bossiney, Cornwall, in 1559. At the subsequent election in 1563, he was returned for both Lyme Regis, Dorset, another constituency under Bedford's influence, and Banbury, Oxfordshire. He chose to sit for Lyme Regis. In January 1562 he married Anne, daughter of Sir George Barne, Lord Mayor of London in 1552–3, and widow of wine merchant Alexander Carleill. Anne died two years later leaving her son Christopher Carleill in Walsingham's care. In 1566, Walsingham married Ursula St. Barbe, widow of Sir Richard Worsley, and Walsingham acquired her estates of Appuldurcombe and Carisbrooke Priory on the Isle of Wight. The following year, they had a daughter, Frances. Walsingham's other two stepsons, Ursula's sons John and George, were killed in a gunpowder accident at Appuldurcombe in 1567. In the following years, Walsingham became active in soliciting support for the Huguenots in France and developed a friendly and close working relationship with Nicholas Throckmorton, his predecessor as MP for Lyme Regis and a former ambassador to France. By 1569, Walsingham was working with William Cecil to counteract plots against Elizabeth. He was instrumental in the collapse of the Ridolfi plot, which hoped to replace Elizabeth with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. He is credited with writing propaganda decrying a conspiratorial marriage between Mary and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and Roberto di Ridolfi, after whom the plot was named, was interrogated at Walsingham's house. In 1570, the Queen chose Walsingham to support the Huguenots in their negotiations with Charles IX of France. Later that year, he succeeded Sir Henry Norris as English ambassador in Paris. One of his duties was to continue negotiations for a marriage between Elizabeth and Charles IX's younger brother Henry, Duke of Anjou. The marriage plan was eventually dropped on the grounds of Henry's Catholicism. A substitute match with the youngest brother, Francis, Duke of Alençon, was proposed but Walsingham considered him ugly and "void of a good humour". Elizabeth was 20 years older than Alençon, and was concerned that the age difference would be seen as absurd. Walsingham believed that it would serve England better to seek a military alliance with France against Spanish interests. The defensive Treaty of Blois was concluded between France and England in 1572, but the treaty made no provision for a royal marriage and left the question of Elizabeth's successor open. The Huguenots and other European Protestant interests supported the nascent revolt in the Spanish Netherlands, which were provinces of Habsburg Spain. When Catholic opposition to this course in France resulted in the death of Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny and the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, Walsingham's house in Paris became a temporary sanctuary for Protestant refugees, including Philip Sidney. Ursula, who was pregnant, escaped to England with their four-year-old daughter. She gave birth to a second girl, Mary, in January 1573 while Walsingham was still in France. He returned to England in April 1573, having established himself as a competent official whom the Queen and Cecil could trust. He cultivated contacts throughout Europe, and a century later his dispatches would be published as The Complete Ambassador. In the December following his return, Walsingham was appointed to the Privy Council of England and was made joint principal secretary (the position which later became "Secretary of State") with Sir Thomas Smith. Smith retired in 1576, leaving Walsingham in effective control of the privy seal, though he was not formally invested as Lord Privy Seal. Walsingham acquired a Surrey county seat in Parliament from 1572 that he retained until his death, but he was not a major parliamentarian. He was knighted on 1 December 1577, and held the sinecure posts of Recorder of Colchester, custos rotulorum of Hampshire, and High Steward of Salisbury, Ipswich and Winchester. He was appointed Chancellor of the Order of the Garter from 22 April 1578 until succeeded by Sir Amias Paulet in June 1587, when he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in addition to principal secretary. ## Secretary of State The duties of the principal secretary were not defined formally, but as he handled all royal correspondence and determined the agenda of council meetings, he could wield great influence in all matters of policy and in every field of government, both foreign and domestic. During his term of office, Walsingham supported the use of England's maritime power to open new trade routes and explore the New World, and was at the heart of international affairs. He was involved directly with English policy towards Spain, the Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland and France, and embarked on several diplomatic missions to neighbouring European states. Closely linked to the mercantile community, he actively supported trade promotion schemes and invested in the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company. He supported the attempts of John Davis and Martin Frobisher to discover the Northwest Passage and exploit the mineral resources of Labrador, and encouraged Humphrey Gilbert's exploration of Newfoundland. Gilbert's voyage was largely financed by recusant Catholics and Walsingham favoured the scheme as a potential means of removing Catholics from England by encouraging emigration to the New World. Walsingham was among the promoters of Francis Drake's profitable 1578–1581 circumnavigation of the world, correctly judging that Spanish possessions in the Pacific were vulnerable to attack. The venture was calculated to promote the Protestant interest by embarrassing and weakening the Spanish, as well as to seize Spanish treasure. The first edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigation, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation was dedicated to Walsingham. Walsingham advocated direct intervention in the Netherlands in support of the Protestant revolt against Spain, on the grounds that although wars of conquest were unjust, wars in defence of religious liberty and freedom were not. Cecil was more circumspect and advised a policy of mediation, a policy that Elizabeth endorsed. Walsingham was sent on a special embassy to the Netherlands in 1578, to sound out a potential peace deal and gather military intelligence. Charles IX died in 1574 and the Duke of Anjou inherited the French throne as Henry III. Between 1578 and 1581 the Queen resurrected attempts to negotiate a marriage with Henry III's youngest brother, the Duke of Alençon, who had put himself forward as a protector of the Huguenots and a potential leader of the Dutch. Walsingham was sent to France in mid-1581 to discuss an Anglo-French alliance, but the French wanted the marriage agreed first and Walsingham was under instruction to obtain a treaty before committing to the marriage. He returned to England without an agreement. Personally, Walsingham opposed the marriage, perhaps to the point of encouraging public opposition. Alençon was a Catholic and as his elder brother, Henry III, was childless, he was heir presumptive to the French throne. Elizabeth was past the age of childbearing and had no clear successor. If she died while married to him, her realms could fall under French control. By comparing the match of Elizabeth and Alençon with the match of the Protestant Henry of Navarre and the Catholic Margaret of Valois, which occurred in the week before the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, the "most horrible spectacle" he had ever witnessed, Walsingham raised the spectre of religious riots in England in the event of the marriage proceeding. Elizabeth put up with his blunt, often unwelcome, advice, and acknowledged his strong beliefs in a letter, in which she called him "her Moor [who] cannot change his colour". These were years of tension in policy towards France, with Walsingham sceptical of the unpredictable Henry III and distrustful of the English ambassador in Paris, Edward Stafford. Stafford, who was compromised by his gambling debts, was in the pay of the Spanish and passed vital information to Spain. Walsingham may have been aware of Stafford's duplicity, as he fed the ambassador false information, presumably in the hope of fooling or confusing the Spanish. The pro-English Regent of Scotland James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, whom Walsingham had supported, was overthrown in 1578. After the collapse of the Raid of Ruthven, another initiative to secure a pro-English government in Scotland, Walsingham reluctantly visited the Scottish court in August 1583, knowing that his diplomatic mission was unlikely to succeed. James VI dismissed Walsingham's advice on domestic policy saying he was an "absolute King" in Scotland. Walsingham replied with a discourse on the topic that "young princes were many times carried into great errors upon an opinion of the absoluteness of their royal authority and do not consider, that when they transgress the bounds and limits of the law, they leave to be kings and become tyrants." According to James Melville of Halhill, James VI intended to give Walsingham a valuable diamond ring as a parting gift, but James Stewart, Earl of Arran, who Walsingham had ignored, substituted a ring of crystal. A mutual defence pact was eventually agreed in the Treaty of Berwick of 1586. Walsingham's cousin Edward Denny fought in Ireland during the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond and was one of the English settlers granted land in Munster confiscated from Desmond. Walsingham's stepson Christopher Carleill commanded the garrisons at Coleraine and Carrickfergus. Walsingham thought Irish farmland was underdeveloped and hoped that plantation would improve the productivity of estates. Tensions between the native Irish and the English settlers had lasting effects on the history of Ireland. Walsingham's younger daughter Mary died aged seven in July 1580; his elder daughter, Frances, married Sir Philip Sidney on 21 September 1583, despite the Queen's initial objections to the match (for unknown reasons) earlier in the year. As part of the marriage agreement, Walsingham agreed to pay £1,500 of Sidney's debts and gave his daughter and son-in-law the use of his manor at Barn Elms in Surrey. A granddaughter born in November 1585 was named Elizabeth after the Queen, who was one of two godparents along with Sidney's uncle, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester. The following year, Sidney was killed fighting the Spanish in the Netherlands and Walsingham was faced with paying off more of Sidney's extensive debts. His widowed daughter gave birth, in a difficult delivery, to a second child shortly afterward, but the baby, a girl, was stillborn. ## Espionage Walsingham was driven by Protestant zeal to counter Catholicism, and sanctioned the use of torture against Catholic priests and suspected conspirators. Edmund Campion was among those tortured and found guilty on the basis of extracted evidence; he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1581. Walsingham could never forget the atrocities against Protestants he had witnessed in France during the Bartholomew's Day massacre and believed a similar slaughter would occur in England in the event of a Catholic resurgence. Walsingham's brother-in-law Robert Beale, who was in Paris with Walsingham at the time of the massacre, encapsulated Walsingham's view: "I think it time and more than time for us to awake out of our dead sleep, and take heed lest like mischief as has already overwhelmed the brethren and neighbours in France and Flanders embrace us which be left in such sort as we shall not be able to escape." Walsingham tracked down Catholic priests in England and supposed conspirators by employing informers, and intercepting correspondence. Walsingham's staff in England included the cryptographer Thomas Phelippes, who was an expert in forgery and deciphering letters, and Arthur Gregory, who was skilled at breaking and repairing seals without detection. In May 1582, letters from the Spanish ambassador in England, Bernardino de Mendoza, to contacts in Scotland were found on a messenger by Sir John Forster, who forwarded them to Walsingham. The letters indicated a conspiracy among the Catholic powers to invade England and displace Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots. By April 1583, Walsingham had a spy, identified as Giordano Bruno by historian John Bossy, deployed in the French embassy in London. Walsingham's contact reported that Francis Throckmorton, a nephew of Walsingham's old friend Nicholas Throckmorton, had visited the ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. In November 1583, after six months of surveillance, Walsingham had Throckmorton arrested and then tortured to secure a confession—an admission of guilt that clearly implicated Mendoza. The Throckmorton plot called for an invasion of England along with a domestic uprising to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and depose Elizabeth. Throckmorton was executed in 1584 and Mendoza was expelled from England. Walsingham is often mentioned - negatively - in coded letters from Mary, Queen of Scots, to the French ambassador. ### Entrapment of Mary, Queen of Scots After the assassination in mid-1584 of William the Silent, the leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain, English military intervention in the Low Countries was agreed in the Treaties of Nonsuch of 1585. The murder of William the Silent also reinforced fears for Queen Elizabeth's safety. Walsingham helped create the Bond of Association, the signatories of which promised to hunt down and kill anyone who conspired against Elizabeth. The Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person, passed by Parliament in March 1585, set up a legal process for trying any claimant to the throne implicated in plots against the Queen. The following month Mary, Queen of Scots, was placed in the strict custody of Sir Amias Paulet, a friend of Walsingham. At Christmas, she was moved to a moated manor house at Chartley. Walsingham instructed Paulet to open, read and pass to Mary unsealed any letters that she received, and to block any potential route for clandestine correspondence. In a successful attempt to entrap her, Walsingham arranged a single exception: a covert means for Mary's letters to be smuggled in and out of Chartley in a beer keg. Mary was misled into thinking these secret letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham's agents. In July 1586, Anthony Babington wrote to Mary about an impending plot to free her and kill Elizabeth. Mary's reply was clearly encouraging and sanctioned Babington's plans. Walsingham had Babington and his associates rounded up; fourteen were executed in September 1586. In October, Mary was put on trial under the Act for the Surety of the Queen's Person in front of 36 commissioners, including Walsingham. During the presentation of evidence against her, Mary broke down and pointed accusingly at Walsingham saying, "all of this is the work of Monsieur de Walsingham for my destruction", to which he replied, "God is my witness that as a private person I have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and as Secretary of State, nothing unbefitting my duty." Mary was found guilty and the warrant for her execution was drafted, but Elizabeth hesitated to sign it, despite pressure from Walsingham. Walsingham wrote to Paulet urging him to find "some way to shorten the life" of Mary to relieve Elizabeth of the burden, to which Paulet replied indignantly, "God forbid that I should make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor posterity, to shed blood without law or warrant." Walsingham made arrangements for Mary's execution; Elizabeth signed the warrant on 1 February 1587 and entrusted it to William Davison, who had been appointed as junior Secretary of State in late September 1586. Davison passed the warrant to Cecil and a privy council convened by Cecil without Elizabeth's knowledge agreed to carry out the sentence as soon as was practical. Within a week, Mary was beheaded. On hearing of the execution, Elizabeth claimed not to have sanctioned the action and that she had not meant Davison to part with the warrant. Davison was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Walsingham's share of Elizabeth's displeasure was small because he was absent from court, at home ill, in the weeks just before and after the execution. Davison was eventually released in October 1588, on the orders of Cecil and Walsingham. ### Spanish Armada From 1586, Walsingham received many dispatches from his agents in mercantile communities and foreign courts detailing Spanish preparations for an invasion of England. Walsingham's recruitment of Anthony Standen, a friend of the Tuscan ambassador to Madrid, was an exceptional intelligence triumph and Standen's dispatches were deeply revealing. Walsingham worked to prepare England for a potential war with Spain, in particular by supervising the substantial rebuilding of Dover Harbour, and encouraging a more aggressive strategy. On Walsingham's instructions, the English ambassador in Turkey, William Harborne, attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the Ottoman Sultan to attack Spanish possessions in the Mediterranean in the hope of distracting Spanish forces. Walsingham supported Francis Drake's raid of Cadiz in 1587, which wrought havoc with Spanish logistics. The Spanish Armada sailed for England in July 1588. Walsingham received regular dispatches from the English naval forces, and raised his own troop of 260 men as part of the land defences. On 18 August 1588, after the dispersal of the armada, naval commander Lord Henry Seymour wrote to Walsingham, "you have fought more with your pen than many have in our English navy fought with their enemies". In foreign intelligence, Walsingham's extensive network of "intelligencers", who passed on general news as well as secrets, spanned Europe and the Mediterranean. While foreign intelligence was a normal part of the principal secretary's activities, Walsingham brought to it flair and ambition, and large sums of his own money. He cast his net more widely than others had done previously: expanding and exploiting links across the continent as well as in Constantinople and Algiers, and building and inserting contacts among Catholic exiles. Among his spies may have been the playwright Christopher Marlowe; Marlowe was in France in the mid-1580s and was acquainted with Walsingham's kinsman Thomas Walsingham. ## Death and legacy From 1571 onwards, Walsingham complained of ill health and often retired to his country estate for periods of recuperation. He complained of "sundry carnosities", pains in his head, stomach and back, and difficulty in passing urine. Suggested diagnoses include cancer, kidney stones, urinary infection, and diabetes. He died on 6 April 1590, at his house in Seething Lane. Historian William Camden wrote that Walsingham died from "a carnosity growing intra testium tunicas [testicular cancer]". He was buried privately in a simple ceremony at 10 pm on the following day, beside his son-in-law, in Old St Paul's Cathedral. The grave and monument were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. His name appears on a modern monument in the crypt listing the important graves lost. In his will, dated 12 December 1589, Walsingham complained of "the greatness of my debts and the mean state [I] shall leave my wife and heirs in", but the true state of his finances is unclear. He received grants of land from the Queen, grants for the export of cloth and leases of customs in the northern and western ports. His primary residences, apart from the court, were in Seething Lane by the Tower of London (now the site of a Victorian office building called Walsingham House), at Barn Elms in Surrey and at Odiham in Hampshire. Nothing remains of any of his houses. He spent much of his own money on espionage in the service of the Queen and the Protestant cause. In 1586, he funded a lectureship in theology at Oxford University for the Puritan John Rainolds. He had underwritten the debts of his son-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney, had pursued the Sidney estate for recompense unsuccessfully and had carried out major land transactions in his later years. After his death, his friends reflected that poor bookkeeping had left him further in the Crown's debt than was fair. In 1611, the Crown's debts to him were calculated at over £48,000, but his debts to the Crown were calculated at over £43,000 and a judge, Sir Julius Caesar, ordered both sets of debts cancelled quid pro quo. Walsingham's surviving daughter Frances received a £300 annuity, and married the Earl of Essex. Ursula, Lady Walsingham, continued to live at Barn Elms with a staff of servants until her death in 1602. Protestants lauded Walsingham as "a sound pillar of our commonwealth and chief patron of virtue, learning and chivalry". He was part of a Protestant intelligentsia that included Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and John Dee: men who promoted an expansionist and nationalist English Renaissance. Spenser included a dedicatory sonnet to Walsingham in the Faerie Queene, likening him to Maecenas who introduced Virgil to the Emperor Augustus. After Walsingham's death, Sir John Davies composed an acrostic poem in his memory and Watson wrote an elegy, Meliboeus, in Latin. On the other hand, Jesuit Robert Persons thought Walsingham "cruel and inhumane" in his persecution of Catholics. Catholic sources portray a ruthless, devious man driven by religious intolerance and an excessive love for intrigue. Walsingham attracts controversy still. Although he was ruthless, his opponents on the Catholic side were no less so; the treatment of prisoners and suspects by Tudor authorities was typical of European governments of the time. Walsingham's personal, as opposed to his public, character is elusive; his public papers were seized by the government while many of his private papers, which might have revealed much, were lost. The fragments that do survive demonstrate his personal interest in gardening and falconry. ### Portrayal in fiction Fictional portrayals of Walsingham tend to follow Catholic interpretations, depicting him as sinister and Machiavellian. He features in conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Christopher Marlowe, whom he predeceased. Charles Nicholl examined (and rejected) such theories in The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (1992), which was used as a source by Anthony Burgess for his novel A Dead Man in Deptford (1993). The 1998 film Elizabeth gives considerable, although sometimes historically inaccurate, prominence to Walsingham (portrayed by Geoffrey Rush). It fictionalizes him as irreligious and sexually ambiguous, merges chronologically distant events, and inaccurately suggests that he murdered Mary of Guise. Rush reprised the role in the 2007 sequel, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Both Stephen Murray in the 1971 BBC series Elizabeth R and Patrick Malahide in the 2005 Channel Four miniseries Elizabeth I play him as a dour official. ## Explanatory notes

U.S. Route 16 in Michigan

Former U.S. Highway in Michigan

US Highway 16 (US 16), also called Grand River Avenue for much of its length in the state, was one of the principal roads prior to the post-World War II construction of freeways in the state of Michigan. Before the creation of the United States Numbered Highway System in 1926, the highway had been designated as a state highway numbered M-16. The modern route of Grand River Avenue cuts across the Lower Peninsula in a northwest–southeast fashion from near Grand Rapids to Detroit. Before the late 1950s and early 1960s, US 16 followed other roads between Muskegon and Grand Rapids, and then Grand River Avenue through Lansing to Detroit. In the years immediately preceding the creation of the Interstate Highway System, US 16 was shifted from older roads to newer freeways. Later, it was co-designated as an Interstate. When the gap in the freeway was filled in around Lansing, the US 16 designation was decommissioned in the state. The freeway was solely designated Interstate 96 (I-96) east of Grand Rapids and I-196 west of that city. The original pathway along the Grand River Avenue corridor was an Indian trail, a footpath used by the native population. The first European settlers to the area now known as Michigan also used this trail and in some areas enlarged it for the passage of wagons. In Detroit, Grand River is one of five major avenues (along with Woodward, Michigan, Gratiot, and Jefferson) planned by Judge Augustus Woodward in 1805 that extended from Downtown Detroit in differing radial directions; Grand River Avenue extends northwesterly from the city's downtown. In the middle of the 19th century, the trail was expanded into a plank road that formed the basis for one of the first state trunkline highways as M-16 in the early 20th century. Later, the highway was rerouted to replace M-126 and create M-104. Current segments of the roadway are still part of the state highway system as sections of M-5, M-11, M-43 or business loops off I-96. The portion of Grand River Avenue in Detroit between I-96 and the intersection with Cass Avenue and Middle Street in Downtown Detroit is an unsigned state trunkline, sometimes referred to as Old Business Spur I-96 (Old BS I-96). ## Route description At the time of its decommissioning, US 16 started its run through Michigan at the Grand Trunk Western Railroad docks in Muskegon. The SS Milwaukee Clipper operated as a car ferry across Lake Michigan, connecting Muskegon to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where US 16 continued to the west. From the docks, US 16 and M-46 traveled concurrently south and then east through downtown Muskegon. At Peck Street, US 16 turned south along Business US 31 (Bus. US 31). These two highways ran concurrently out of town to the south through Muskegon Heights to Norton Shores. There, the business loop ended at US 31, and US 16 joined the I-196 freeway headed east. (Later, the I-96 and I-196 designations west of Grand Rapids would be flipped, but at the time leading up to US 16's decommissioning in the state of Michigan, this had not yet been approved.) The I-196/US 16 freeway traveled southeast of Norton Shores through woodlands in rural Muskegon County parallel to the former US 16 routing through Fruitport to Nunica in Ottawa County. The freeway turned more directly east in Nunica past the eastern terminus of M-104, and continued through more mixed forest and grassland terrain to serve the communities of Coopersville and Marne. As the freeway approached Kent County, it met the western terminus of M-11 which was the former routing of US 16 through the Grand Rapids metropolitan area. I-196/US 16 continued eastward around the north side of the metropolitan area through the suburbs of Walker and Comstock Park. The freeway intersected the contemporaneous routing of US 131 along the East Beltline and curved south through the eastern edge of Grand Rapids to meet the end of I-96 east of downtown. There I-196 ended and US 16 was transferred to the I-96 freeway. I-96/US 16 continued southward intersecting Cascade Road, which was previously US 16. Cascade Road east of this interchange meets the westernmost part of Grand River Avenue, which carried US 16 east continuously to Downtown Detroit. M-50 also joined the freeway at Cascade Road headed east, and together I-96/US 16/M-50 continued through eastern Kent County. M-50 departed to the south near Lowell, and the freeway crossed into southern Ionia County. Passing south of Portland, the freeway crossed east into Clinton County. North of Grand Ledge, I-96 ended and US 16 followed Wright Road off the freeway to Grand River Avenue. From there east, US 16 resumed its historic routing into the city of Lansing. Grand River Avenue carried the highway past the Capital City Airport and east to Larch Street, where US 16 turned south along US 27 north of downtown Lansing. At Saginaw Street, eastbound US 16 turned east on the one-way street, while westbound traffic ran a block north on Grand River Avenue. The two directions of travel merge at the east end of Saginaw Street in East Lansing. Grand River Avenue through East Lansing follows a tree-lined boulevard that forms the division between the campus of Michigan State University to the south and the rest of the city to the north. US 16 continued east in Ingham County through Okemos and rural parts of the county through Williamston and Webberville. Grand River Avenue crosses to the east into Livingston County through Fowlerville to Howell. In Howell, Grand River Avenue meets Hartland Road which carries M-59; the highway also met M-155 in downtown, which at the time provided access to the Howell State Hospital. In the approach to Brighton, Grand River Avenue passes through rural southeast Michigan lake country. In Brighton, Grand River Avenue crossed the western end of the I-96 freeway. US 16 merged onto the freeway, and I-96/US 16 met the northern end of the US 23 freeway. I-96/US 16 continued east into Oakland County through Wixom and Novi. Near Farmington, I-96/US 16 continued to the southeast of the present-day I-96/I-275/I-696/M-5 interchange along the current M-5 freeway. Grand River Avenue through there was Business Loop I-96 (BL I-96). The freeway ends at a junction with Grand River Avenue that also marked the end of the business loop and the eastern end of I-96 at the time. From there, US 16 continued along Grand River Avenue the rest of way into Downtown Detroit. Along that routing, it intersected US 24 at Telegraph Road and M-39 at Southfield Road. US 16 continued past the eastern terminus of M-14 at Plymouth Road, which until 1956 had carried US 12, which had then been concurrent with US 16 to Cadillac Square. There US 16 terminated at a common point with US 10 (Woodward Avenue) and US 12 (Michigan Avenue), which had replaced US 112 less than a year earlier. US 25 ran through the square on Fort Street and Gratiot Avenue. ## History The history of Grand River Avenue, and US 16 in Michigan, dates back to before the earliest settlement of Michigan by Europeans. The route has been the basis for an Indian trail, a pathway for European settlers, a state highway, a part of the US Highway System, and a section of the Interstate Highway System. ### Indian trail to state highway The chief transportation routes in 1701 were the Indian footpaths that crossed the future state of Michigan; the Grand River Trail was one of these thirteen trails at the time. In 1805, Detroit created 120-foot (37 m) rights-of-way for the principal streets of the city, Grand River Avenue included. This street plan was devised by Augustus Woodward and others following a devastating fire in Detroit. A ten-year project to construct a plank road between Detroit and Howell was authorized in 1820 along the Grand River Trail. Grand River Avenue was included as one of Five Great Military Roads by Governor Lewis Cass in 1825, along with the River Road, Michigan Avenue, Woodward Avenue and Gratiot Avenue. The Grand River Road, precursor to the modern Grand River Avenue was named by Benjamin Williams, cofounder of Owosso. The original Native American name for the river was Wash-ten-ong sibi meaning "the river that extends far off", or "far into the interior", which was translated as La Grande Riviere, the French name for the river; this name was then applied to the name of the trail that paralleled at least half of the river's length. The opening of the Erie Canal in New York in 1826 brought new settlers to the Great Lakes region, and to the future state of Michigan. Many of these settlers began their inland journeys in Detroit. At first the Grand River Road was a "deep rutted, ditch bordered road". The road branched into two at Rouge (now Redford); the southern branch roughly followed the modern route of Grand River Avenue and the northern route ran by way of Pontiac along Woodward Avenue and the modern M-21 to the north of the Lansing area. From Bancroft, several trails branched off, including the northern branch of the Grand River Road and the Saginaw Trail. The two branches merged back together near Dewitt and continued west toward Ionia and on to Grand Rapids and Newton (now Grand Haven). The early travelers plied the road in wagons pulled by oxen or horses, and drivers charged between four and seven cents a mile (equivalent to \$Expression error: Unexpected / operator–Expression error: Unexpected / operator/mi in ). The horses were exchanged every 12–15 miles (19–24 km) with the speed averaging around 8–10 miles per hour (13–16 km/h) with few obstacles. Congress further aided the road in 1835 with an appropriation of \$25,000 (equivalent to \$ in ) for a 20-foot-wide (6 m) road on 100 feet (30 m) of right-of-way. These improvements included removing brush and debris and the construction of bridges across the Rouge, Shiawassee, Red Cedar and Grand rivers. The Grand River Road was a major route for settlers headed inland to Grand Rapids in 1836, as the shortest route for travelers coming from Detroit. An economic panic in 1837 drove settlers from New York to Michigan; these were the travelers who followed the Grand River Road. New settlements were created along the route, every six miles (9.7 km) or so, that distance being a good day's travel by horse. Approximately 120 wagons left Detroit each day between August and November 1843. After statehood in 1837, Michigan assumed the costs for construction work to the Grand River Trail. At that time, about 60 miles (97 km) had been surveyed from Detroit westward. The new state lacked the money to continue improvements to the road, and Michigan petitioned Congress for the better part of the next decade for money to complete the work. When the state capital was moved to Lansing in 1847, an improved road was needed to the capital city. The first segments of roadway were privatized starting in 1844. In 1850, the Michigan State Legislature established the Lansing and Howell Plank Road Company, which set about converting various Indian trails into the Lansing–Howell Plank Road, a task the company completed by 1853. At Howell the road connected with the Detroit–Howell Plank Road, establishing the first improved connection direct from the state capital to Michigan's largest metropolis. The Lansing–Detroit Plank Road was a toll road until the 1880s, and it eventually evolved into the eastern part of the modern Grand River Avenue. By 1900, only a short stretch of the Detroit–Howell Plank Road was still made of planks; most of the other plank roads had been converted to gravel by this time. On May 13, 1913, the Michigan Legislature passed the State Reward Trunk Line Highway Act (Public Act 334 of 1913) that created the original state highway system. In that act, Grand River Avenue between Detroit and Grand Rapids was included as Division 9 of the system. The state highways were signposted starting in 1919, and on the first maps published on July 1 of that year, the Michigan State Highway Department (MSHD) had applied the M-16 number to Grand River Avenue across the state between Grand Haven and Detroit. M-16 was rerouted in the Lansing area in 1925, running along Grand River Avenue from Grand Ledge to East Lansing. The former routing through Downtown Lansing on Michigan Avenue became part of M-39 and the section north of Grand Ledge was eventually redesignated M-100. A second realignment moved M-16 to follow Grand River Avenue from Ionia through Ada. The former alignment became a part of M-21. On August 7, 1926, the state completed paving on M-16, opening it to traffic as "the first paved highway across the state". The M-16 designation lasted for seven years. As the states were meeting with the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO, now AASHTO) to plan the United States Numbered Highway System, the route of M-16 was originally planned for inclusion in US 18. When the system was created on November 11, 1926, Grand River Avenue and M-16 became part of US 16. ### US Highway to Interstate In 1929, Allan Williams placed a picnic table on the side of the road along US 16 south of Saranac. Williams was the Ionia County engineer in charge of the various roads in the county, and that location is "what many consider to be the nation's first roadside table". The first change to the US 16 routing was made in 1933 when the highway was moved to bypass Farmington, with the old routing retained as a state highway. The next year, in 1934, M-126 was created between Nunica and Muskegon. In 1940, US 16 was rerouted to replace M-126, and the former route of US 16 between Nunica and Grand Haven was redesignated M-104. Two further changes during 1941–42 rerouted the western end in Muskegon to end at the car ferry docks. Previously, motorists had to navigate from the western end along other roads to the ferry connection to the rest of US 16 in Wisconsin. The second change routed Bypass US 16 (Byp. US 16) along 28th Street and Wilson (previously the South Beltline and West Beltline sections of M-114) in the Grand Rapids area. The US 16 designation was moved in 1953 to replace Byp. US 16 while the former routing through downtown Grand Rapids was redesignated Business US 16 (Bus. US 16). MSHD had plans to upgrade the US 16 corridor to freeway standards in the middle of the 20th century. The first planning map in 1947 for what later became the Interstate Highway System showed a highway in the corridor. The General Location of National System of Interstate Highways Including All Additional Routes at Urban Areas Designated in September 1955, showed generalized plans for the locations of Interstate Highways as designated in 1955. This also included a highway in the US 16 corridor. The 1957 approval for the Interstate Highway System replaced the Grand Rapids–Detroit section of US 16 with a portion of Interstate 94 (I-94), with the remainder to be I-94N. MSHD submitted a recommended numbering plan for the Interstates in 1958 that showed I-96 following the US 16 corridor. When initially approved, the Muskegon–Grand Rapids segment of US 16 was to be numbered as I-196 while the remainder was part of I-96. Segments of the road were upgraded in 1956 between Coopersville and Marne, Portland and Eagle, and Brighton and Farmington. By 1962, freeway construction allowed motorists to travel between Muskegon and the Lansing area on a freeway, bypassing the old Grand River Avenue route. The final connection between Lansing and Brighton was completed in late 1962. At that time, the US 16 designation, which had been applied alongside the I-96 and I-196 designations, was decommissioned. Segments of the old highway were retained in the state highway system under different numbers. Sections through Portland, Lansing, Howell, Farmington and Detroit were given Business Loop (BL) or Business Spur (BS) I-96 designations. The section between Lansing and Webberville became part of an extended M-43. Other sections in the Detroit area became parts of M-102, M-5, or unsigned state highway. ### Post-Interstate era After US 16 was transferred to the new freeway, Grand River Avenue lost its state highway status along most of its length. Today the roadway remains the "Main Street" of over a dozen Michigan cities and a scenic route through one of the state's most populated corridors. In 1995, major reconstruction work along Grand River Avenue in East Lansing uncovered rotting logs, buried about 2 feet (0.61 m) below the present grade, that had been used as underlayment for the plank road surface in a low, swampy area. The logs had been in place for nearly 150 years. In 2004, the state transferred several blocks at the eastern end of Grand River Avenue to the City of Detroit. State trunkline control now ends at the corner of Grand River Avenue, Middle Street, and Cass Avenue. Community leaders in Lansing have proposed renaming a section of Grand River Avenue in Old Town Lansing for César Chávez, the Mexican-American civil rights activist. The group "Lansing for Cesar E. Chavez" was raising funds to rename the section between Oakland and Pine streets in Old Town. Previously, a section of Grand Avenue was renamed for Chávez in 1994, but the voters overturned the decision. The renaming proposal was even mentioned as a way to untangle a maze of different branches of Grand River Avenue running through Old Town. Currently, East Grand River Avenue and North Grand River Avenue bridge between sections of Grand River Avenue, in addition to Grand Avenue which runs along the Grand River near downtown. While Lansing's Latino community supported the proposal, the business community opposed it. One shop owner said she would have \$10,000 in costs associated with a name change, adding, "I think there's many beautiful ways to honor such an incredible man. Changing five blocks of a street doesn't seem to do justice." Another business owner cited the work the Old Town Commercial Association has done to market the area using the Grand River Avenue name, marketing that would be useless after a name change. The compromise solution reached in August 2010 was to rename lot 56, where Old Town holds festivals, to Cesar Chavez Plaza. Street signs would be installed marking parts of Grand River Avenue as Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, but only in a memorial capacity; the street would still be officially named Grand River Avenue. ## Memorial highway designations Born in Grand Rapids in 1884, Arthur H. Vandenberg was appointed to the United States Senate upon the death in office of Woodbridge N. Ferris in 1928. Vandenberg, a Republican, served as a member of the "isolationist bloc", and was an active opponent of the New Deal policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The senator declined a nomination for Vice President in 1936. In the aftermath of World War II, Vandenberg's world view changed significantly. He helped to draft the United Nations Charter and worked to secure its unanimous ratification in the Senate. He also worked to secure passage of the Marshall Plan and helped to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. After his death in 1951, Michigan residents wanted to memorialize Vandenberg. The following year, the Michigan Legislature dedicated the length of US 16 from Muskegon to Detroit as the Arthur Vandenberg Memorial Highway by enacting Public Act 70 of 1952. Vandenberg was not the only national figure honored with a memorial designation along the route of US 16 in Michigan. For a period from the 1930s through the 1950s, the highway used a few blocks of Washington Boulevard to connect between Grand River and Michigan avenues on its route through Detroit to its terminus at Cadillac Square. This street was named in honor of George Washington for his service as the "father of his country". The street was named by Judge Woodward as a part of his general street plan for the city of Detroit in 1807. ## Major intersections ## Related trunklines ### Grand Rapids bypass Bypass US Highway 16 (Byp. US 16) was a bypass route of US 16 in the Grand Rapids area. The highway became a part of the state highway system c. 1930 as a part of M-114, which was a beltline around the Grand Rapids area. By 1942, the trunkline was completed and reassigned a Byp. US 16 designation along the southern and western legs. The designation connected to US 16 in Walker Township (now the city of Walker) and ran south along what is now Wilson Avenue over the Grand River into Grandville. From there it turned easterly along what is now 28th Street through Wyoming and Paris townships (now the cities of Wyoming and Kentwood) before terminating at US 16 in Cascade Township. The designation was used until the mainline US 16 was rerouted over the bypass in 1953. ### Grand Rapids business loop Business US Highway 16 (Bus. US 16) was a business route in the Grand Rapids area in the 1950s and 1960s. When US 16 was rerouted to replace Byp. US 16 around the southern and western sides of the city in 1953, the former route of the mainline through downtown was redesignated as the business loop. That loop followed Remembrance Avenue southeasterly to Leonard Avenue in Walker Township. From there, the loop turned easterly on Leonard over the Grand River to Monroe Avenue before turning south parallel to the river along Monroe into downtown. In downtown Grand Rapids, Bus. US 16 turned eastward on Fulton Avenue into East Grand Rapids. There the loop followed Cascade Road into Cascade Township where it reconnected to US 16 at the intersection with 28th Street. Bus. US 16 lasted until 1962 when US 16 was decommissioned in Michigan. ### Farmington alternate route US Highway 16A (US 16A) was an alternate route for US 16 that bypassed Farmington. It was designated in 1933 for a new highway that bypassed downtown along what is now Freedom Road. In 1956, the designation was decommissioned when mainline US 16 was rerouted out of downtown Farmington, replacing US 16A. At the same time, the former route of the mainline through downtown was redesignated Bus. US 16. ### Farmington business loop Business US Highway 16 (Bus. US 16) was a business loop through downtown Farmington along Grand River Avenue. Its western terminus was at the junction of US 16 and Grand River Avenue west of the city, and the eastern terminus was at the intersection between US 16 and Grand River Avenue southeast of Farmington. This highway was the original route of US 16 though downtown Farmington. In 1933, US 16 was routed onto a bypass route which had been constructed south of the city (the present-day Freedom Road) and the route through Farmington was retained as state trunkline. In 1956, a new bypass freeway was built just to the south of the old bypass as part of the "Brighton–Farmington Expressway" and the route through downtown was designated Bus. US 16. The original plans for I-96 called for it to replace US 16 and to run parallel to Grand River Avenue all the way from Farmington into downtown Detroit. In 1959, the Farmington bypass freeway was given the I-96 designation in addition to the US 16 moniker, and the business route was redesignated as Business Loop I-96 two years later. ## See also

Marie Lloyd

English singer, comedian and actress (1870–1922)

Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (12 February 1870 – 7 October 1922), professionally known as Marie Lloyd (/ˈmɑːri/), was an English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)" and "Oh Mr Porter What Shall I Do". She received both criticism and praise for her use of innuendo and double entendre during her performances, but enjoyed a long and prosperous career, during which she was affectionately called the "Queen of the Music Hall". Born in London, she was showcased by her father at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton. In 1884, she made her professional début as Bella Delmere; she changed her stage name to Marie Lloyd the following year. In 1885, she had success with her song "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", and she frequently topped the bill at prestigious theatres in London's West End. In 1891, she was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear in that year's spectacular Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Christmas pantomime Humpty Dumpty. She starred in a further two productions at the theatre, Little Bo Peep (1892) and Robinson Crusoe (1893). By the mid-1890s, Lloyd was in frequent dispute with Britain's theatre censors due to the risqué content of her songs. Between 1894 and 1900, she became an international success when she toured France, America, Australia and Belgium with her solo music hall act. In 1907, she assisted other performers during the music hall war and took part in demonstrations outside theatres, protesting for better pay and conditions for performers. During the First World War, in common with most other music hall artists, she supported recruitment into the armed services to help the war effort, touring hospitals and industrial institutions to help boost morale. In 1915, she performed her only wartime song "Now You've Got Your Khaki On", which became a favourite among front-line troops. Lloyd had a turbulent private life that was often the subject of press attention: she was married three times, divorced twice, and frequently found herself giving court testimony against two of her husbands who had physically abused her. In later life, she was still in demand at music halls and had a late success in 1919 with her performance of "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)", which became one of her most popular songs. Privately, she suffered from bouts of ill-health and became alcohol-dependent, both of which imposed restrictions on her performing career by the 1920s. In 1922, she gave her final performance at the Alhambra Theatre, London, during which she became ill on stage. She died a few days later at the age of 52. ## Biography ### Family background and early life Lloyd was born on 12 February 1870 in Hoxton, London. Her father, John Wood (1847–1940), was an artificial flower arranger and waiter; her mother, Matilda Mary Caroline née Archer (1849–1931), was a dressmaker and costume designer. Lloyd was the eldest of nine children and became known within the family circle as Tilley. The Wood family were respectable, hard-working, and financially comfortable. Lloyd often took career advice from her mother, whose influence was strong in the family. Lloyd attended a school in Bath Street, London, but disliked formal education and often played truant; with both her parents working, she adopted a maternal role over her siblings, helping to keep them entertained, clean and well cared-for. Along with her sister Alice, she arranged events in which the Wood children performed at the family home. Lloyd enjoyed entertaining her family and decided to form a minstrel act in 1879 called the Fairy Bell troupe, comprising her siblings. Lloyd and the troupe made their début at a mission in Nile Street, Hoxton, in 1880 and followed this with an appearance at the Blue Ribbon Gospel Temperance Mission later the same year. Costumed by Matilda, they toured local doss-houses in East London, where they performed temperance songs, teaching people the dangers of alcohol abuse. Eager to show off his daughter's talent, John secured her unpaid employment as a table singer at the Eagle Tavern in Hoxton, where he worked as a waiter. Among the songs she performed there was "My Soldier Laddie". Together with her performances at the Eagle, Lloyd briefly contributed to the family income by making babies' boots, and, later, curled feathers for hat making. She was unsuccessful at both and was sacked from the latter after being caught dancing on the tables by the foreman. She returned home that evening and declared that she wanted a permanent career on the stage. Although happy to have her performing in her spare time, her parents initially opposed the idea of her appearing on the stage full-time. She recalled that when her parents "saw that they couldn't kick their objections as high as [she] could kick [her] legs, they very sensibly came to the conclusion to let things take their course and said 'Bless you my child, do what you like'." ### Early career and first marriage On 9 May 1885, at the age of 15, Lloyd made her professional solo stage début at the Grecian music hall (in the same premises as the Eagle Tavern), under the name "Matilda Wood". She performed "In the Good Old Days" and "My Soldier Laddie", which proved successful, and earned her a booking at the Sir John Falstaff music hall in Old Street where she sang a series of romantic ballads. Soon after this, she chose the stage name Bella Delmere and appeared on stage in costumes designed by her mother. Her performances were a success, despite her singing other artists' songs without their permission, a practice which brought her a threat of an injunction from one of the original performers. News of her act travelled; that October, she appeared at Collins's Music Hall in Islington in a special performance to celebrate the theatre's refurbishment, the first time she had appeared outside Hoxton, and two months later, she was engaged at the Hammersmith Temple of Varieties and the Middlesex Music Hall in Drury Lane. On 3 February 1886, she appeared at the prestigious Sebright Music Hall in Bethnal Green, where she met George Ware, a prolific composer of music hall songs. Ware became her agent and, after a few weeks, she began performing songs purchased from little-known composers. As her popularity grew, Ware suggested that she change her name. "Marie" was chosen for its "posh" and "slightly French" sound, and "Lloyd" was taken from an edition of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper. Lloyd established her new name on 22 June 1886, with an appearance at the Falstaff Music Hall, where she attracted wide notice for the song "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery" (which was initially written for Nelly Power by Lloyd's agent George Ware). By 1887, her performance of the song had become so popular that she was in demand in London's West End, including the Oxford Music Hall, where she excelled at skirt dancing. George Belmont, the Falstaff's proprietor, secured her an engagement at the Star Palace of Varieties in Bermondsey. She soon began making her own costumes, a skill she learned from her mother, and one she used for the rest of her career. She undertook a month-long tour of Ireland at the start of 1886, earning £10 per week after which she returned to East London to perform at, amongst others, the Sebright Music Hall, Bethnal Green. On 23 October, The Era called her "a pretty little soubrette who dances with great dash and energy." By the end of 1886, Lloyd was playing several halls a night and earned £100 per week. She was now able to afford new songs from established music hall composers and writers, including "Harry's a Soldier", "She Has a Sailor for a Lover", and "Oh Jeremiah, Don't You Go to Sea". By 1887, Lloyd began to display a skill for ad lib, and to gain a reputation for her impromptu performances. It was during this period that she first sang "Whacky-Wack" and "When you Wink the Other Eye", a song which introduced her famous wink at the audience. Unlike her West End audiences who enjoyed her coarse humour, her "blue" performances did not impress audiences in the East End. While appearing at the Foresters music hall in Mile End, she met and began dating Percy Charles Courtenay, a ticket tout from Streatham, London. The courtship was brief, and the couple married on 12 November 1887 at St John the Baptist, Hoxton. In May 1888, Lloyd gave birth to a daughter, Marie Courtenay (1888–1967). The marriage was mostly unhappy, and Courtenay was disliked by Lloyd's family and friends. Before long, Courtenay became addicted to alcohol and gambling, and grew jealous of his wife's close friendship with the 13-year-old actress Bella Burge, to whom Lloyd had rented a room in the marital house. He also became angry at the numerous parties Lloyd hosted for fellow members of the music hall profession including Gus Elen, Dan Leno and Eugene Stratton. In October 1888, Lloyd returned from maternity leave and joined rehearsals for the 1888–89 pantomime The Magic Dragon of the Demon Dell; or, The Search for the Mystic Thyme, in which she was cast as Princess Kristina. The production, which was staged between Boxing Day and February at the Britannia theatre in Hoxton, gave her the security of working close to home for a two-month period. The engagement also gave her much-needed experience of playing to a big audience. The following year, she appeared at more Bohemian venues including the Empire and the Alhambra theatres, the Trocadero Palace of Varieties, and the Royal Standard playhouse. In 1889, she gave birth to a stillborn child, which further damaged her marriage. By the start of the 1890s, Lloyd had built up a successful catalogue of songs, which included "What's That For, Eh?", about a little girl who asks her parents the meaning of various everyday household objects. Her biographer and theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope described the song as being "blue" and thought that it spoke volumes about her reputation thanks to her "wonderful wink, and that sudden, dazzling smile, and the nod of the head." Similar-styled songs followed; "She'd Never had her Ticket Punched Before", told the story of a young, naive woman travelling to London on her own by train. This was followed by "The Wrong Man Never Let a Chance Go By"; "We Don't Want to Fight, But, by Jingo, If We Do"; "Oh You Wink the Other Eye" and "Twiggy Vous"—a song which won her much success and increased her popularity abroad. After an evening's performance at the Oxford music hall, a French well-wisher requested a conversation and to meet Lloyd backstage. Flanked by Courtenay, she appeared at the stage door, where Courtenay threatened the man with violence as both had become suspicious of his interest in her. She took a chance and invited the man into her dressing room, where he identified himself as a member of the French government. He confirmed to her that "Twiggy Vous" was "most popular in Paris"; she was delighted at the news. At the end of the year, Lloyd returned to London where she appeared in the Christmas pantomime Cinderella in Peckham alongside her sister Alice. ### 1890s #### Drury Lane and success Between 1891 and 1893, Lloyd was recruited by the impresario Augustus Harris to appear alongside Dan Leno in the spectacular and popular Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Christmas pantomimes. While lunching with Harris in 1891 to discuss his offer, Lloyd played coy, deliberately confusing the theatre with the lesser known venue the Old Mo so as not to appear conscious of Drury Lane's successful reputation; she compared its structure to that of a prison. Secretly, she was thrilled with the offer, for which she would receive £100 per week. The pantomime seasons lasted from Boxing Day to March and were highly lucrative, but Lloyd found working from a script restrictive. Her first role was Princess Allfair in Humpty Dumpty; or, The Yellow Dwarf and the Fair One, which she dismissed as being "Bloody awful, eh?" She received mixed reviews for her opening performance. The Times described her as being "playful in gesture, graceful in appearance, but not strong in voice." Despite the weak start (which Lloyd blamed on nerves), the pantomime received glowing reviews from the theatrical press. The London Entr'acte thought that she "delivere[d] her text quite pungently, and sings and dances with spirit too." She was noted for her acrobatic dancing on stage, and was able to display handstands, tumbles and high kicks. As a boy, the writer Compton Mackenzie was taken to the show's opening night and admitted that he was "greatly surprised that any girl should have the courage to let the world see her drawers as definitely as Marie Lloyd." Lloyd's biographer Midge Gillies defines 1891 as being the year that she officially "made it" thanks to a catalogue of hit songs and major success in the halls and pantomime. When she appeared at the Oxford music hall in June, the audience cheered so loudly for her return that the following act could not be heard; The Era called her "the favourite of the hour". During the summer months, she toured North England, including Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. At the last she stayed an extra six nights due to popular demand, which caused her to cancel a trip to Paris. The 1892 pantomime was Little Bo Peep; or, Little Red Riding Hood and Hop O' My Thumb, in which she played Little Red Riding Hood. The production was five hours long and culminated with the show's harlequinade. During one scene, her improvisational skills caused some scandal when she got out of bed to pray, but instead reached for a chamber pot. The stunt angered Harris, who ordered her not to do it again or risk immediate dismissal. Max Beerbohm, who was in a later audience, said "Isn't Marie Lloyd charming and sweet in the pantomime? I think of little besides her." On 12 January 1892, Lloyd and Courtenay brawled drunkenly in her Drury Lane dressing room after an evening's performance of Little Bo-Peep. Courtenay pulled a decorative sword off the wall and threatened to cut her throat; she escaped from the room with minor bruises and reported the incident to the Bow Street police station. In early 1893, she travelled to Wolverhampton where she starred as Flossie in another unsuccessful piece called The A.B.C Girl; or, Flossie the Frivolous, which, according to MacQueen-Pope, "ended the Queen of Comedy's career as an actress". Lloyd made her American stage début in 1893, appearing at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York. She sang "Oh You Wink the Other Eye", much to the delight of her American audiences. Other numbers were "After the Pantomime" and "You Should Go to France and See the Ladies Dance", which both required her to wear provocative costumes. Her performances pleased the theatre proprietors, who presented her with an antique tea and coffee service. News of her success reached home, and the London Entr'acte reported that "Miss Marie Lloyd made the biggest hit ever known at Koster and Bial's variety hall, New York." Upon her return to London, Lloyd introduced "Listen with the Right Ear", which was an intended follow-up to "Oh You Wink the Other Eye". Shortly after her return, she sailed to France, to take up an engagement in Paris. Her biographer Daniel Farson thought that she received "greater acclaim than any other English comedienne who had preceded her". She changed the lyrics to some of her best-known songs for her French audience and retitled them, "The Naughty Continong"; "Twiggy Vous"; "I'm Just Back from Paris" and "The Coster Honeymoon in Paris". At Christmas in 1893, she returned to London to honour her final Drury Lane commitment, starring as Polly Perkins in Robinson Crusoe. The part allowed her to perform "The Barmaid" and "The Naughty Continong" and saw her perform a mazurka with Leno. Talking to a friend years later about her Drury Lane engagements, she admitted that she was "the proudest little woman in the world". In May 1894, Courtenay followed Lloyd to the Empire, Leicester Square, where she was performing, and attempted to batter her with a stick, shouting: "I will gouge your eyes out and ruin you!" His assault missed Lloyd, but struck Burge in the face instead. As a result of the incident, Lloyd was sacked from the Empire for fear of a reprisal. Lloyd left the marital home, moving to 73 Carleton Road, Tufnell Park and successfully applied for a restraining warrant, which prevented Courtenay from contacting her. A few weeks later, Lloyd began an affair with the music hall singer Alec Hurley, which resulted in Courtenay initiating divorce proceedings in 1894 on the grounds of her adultery. That year, together with a short tour of the English provinces, Lloyd travelled to New York with Hurley, where she appeared at the Imperial Theatre, staying for two months. On her return to England, she appeared in the Liverpool Christmas pantomime as the principal boy in Pretty Bo-Peep, Little Boy Blue, and the Merry Old Woman who lived in a Shoe. Her performance was praised by the press, who called her "delightfully easy, graceful and self-possessed." #### Risqué reputation and transatlantic tours By 1895, Lloyd's risqué songs were receiving frequent criticism from theatre reviewers and influential feminists. As a result, she often experienced resistance from strict theatre censorship which dogged the rest of her career. The writer and feminist Laura Ormiston Chant, who was a member of the Social Purity Alliance, disliked the bawdiness of music hall performances, and thought that the venues were attractive to prostitutes. Her campaign persuaded the London County Council to erect large screens around the promenade at the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, as part of the licensing conditions. The screens were unpopular and protesters, among them the young Winston Churchill, later pulled them down. That November at the Tivoli theatre, Lloyd performed "Johnny Jones", a ditty about a girl who is taught the facts of life by her best male friend. The song, although not lyrically obscene, was considered to be offensive largely because of the manner in which Lloyd sang it, adding winks and gestures, and creating a conspiratorial relationship with her audience. Social reformers cited "Johnny Jones" as being offensive, but less so compared to other songs of the day. Upon the expiry of a music hall's entertainments licence, the Licensing Committee tried to use the lyrical content of music hall songs as evidence against a renewal. As a result, Lloyd was summoned to perform some of her songs in front of a council committee. She sang "Oh! Mr Porter" (composed for her by George Le Brunn); "A Little of What You Fancy"; and, according to some writers, "She Sits Among the Cabbages and Peas", which she retitled "I Sits Amongst the Cabbages and Leeks" after some protest. The numbers were sung in such a way that the committee had no reason to find anything amiss. Feeling disgruntled at the council's interference, she then rendered Alfred Tennyson's drawing-room ballad "Come into the Garden, Maud" with leers and nudges to illustrate each innuendo. The committee were left stunned at the performance, but Lloyd argued afterwards that the rudeness was "all in the mind". Despite their opposing views on music hall entertainment, Lloyd and Chant shared similar political views, and were wrongly assumed by the press to be enemies. An inspector who reported on one of Lloyd's performances at the Oxford music hall thought that her lyrical content was fine but her knowing nods, looks, smiles and the suggestiveness in her winks to the audience suggested otherwise. The restrictions imposed on the music halls were, by now beginning to affect trade, and many were threatened with closure. To avoid social unrest, Hackney council scrapped the licensing restrictions on 7 October 1896. In 1896, Lloyd sailed to South Africa with her daughter, who appeared as Little Maudie Courtenay on the same bill as her mother. Lloyd came to the attention of Barney Barnato, a British entrepreneur who was responsible for mining diamond and gold. Barnato lavished gifts on her in an attempt to woo her, but his attempts were unsuccessful; nevertheless, the two remained friends until his death in 1897. The tour was a triumph for Lloyd, and her songs became popular among her South African audience. She performed "Wink the Other Eye", "Twiggy-Vous", "Hello, Hello, Hello", "Whacky, Whacky, Whack!", "Keep Off the Grass", and "Oh! Mr Porter". Feeling satisfied at the success she had achieved, Lloyd returned to London once the two-month tour had ended. The following year, Lloyd travelled to New York where she re-appeared at Koster and Bial's Music Hall. Her first song was about a young woman who lacked confidence in finding a suitor. The chorus, "Not for the very best man that ever got into a pair of trousers", proved hilarious; The Era observed that the line "tickled the audience immensely". Following this, she performed a song about a French maid who appeared innocent and petite at first sight, but turned out not to be so. The Era described the character as being "not so demure as she looked, for she confided to her auditors that she 'knew a lot about those tricky little things they don't teach a girl at school'." Many other songs followed and were all warmly received. At the conclusion of each performance, she received gifts from the audience including bouquets and floral structures. The Era commented that "Miss Lloyd's clever character work, her versatility and unflagging endeavours to please were rewarded with deserved success". After the tour, Lloyd returned to London, and moved to Hampstead with Hurley. That Christmas, she appeared in pantomime, this time at the Crown Theatre in Peckham in a production of Dick Whittington in which she played the title role. In it, she sang "A Little Bit Off the Top", which MacQueen-Pope describes as being "one of the pantomime songs of the year". The Music Hall and Theatre Review was equally complimentary, saying: "Brilliant Repertory, Charming Dresses, A Unique Personality!" During the Christmas period of 1898–9, Lloyd returned to the Crown where she took her benefit, during which she appeared in Dick Whittington. The entertainment culminated with a song from Vesta Victoria, and a short piece called The Squeaker, starring Joe Elvin. ### 1900s In February 1900, Lloyd was the subject of another benefit performance at the Crown Theatre in Peckham. Kate Carney, Vesta Tilley and Joe Elvin were among the star turns who performed before the main piece, Cinderella, which starred Lloyd, her sister Alice, Kittee Rayburn and Jennie Rubie. The same year, although her divorce was not yet finalised, Lloyd went to live with Hurley in Southampton Row, London. Hurley, an established singer of coster songs, regularly appeared on the same bill as Lloyd; his calm nature was a contrast to the abusive personality of Courtenay. Lloyd and Hurley set sail for a tour of Australia in 1901, opening at Harry Rickards Opera House in Melbourne on 18 May with their own version of "The Lambeth Walk". After the successful two-month tour, Lloyd and Hurley returned to London where she appeared in the only revue of her career. Entitled The Revue, it was written by Charles Raymond and Phillip Yorke with lyrics by Roland Carse and music by Maurice Jacobi. It was staged at the Tivoli theatre, in celebration of the Coronation of King Edward VII. Lloyd and Courtenay's divorce became absolute on 22 May 1905, and she married Hurley on 27 October 1906. Hurley, although ecstatic with his earlier success in Australia, began feeling sidelined by his wife's popularity. MacQueen-Pope suggested that "[Hurley] was a star who had married a planet. Already the seeds of disaster were being sown." #### Music hall strikes of 1907 Shortly after her marriage to Hurley, Lloyd went to Bournemouth to recuperate from exhaustion. Within days she was back performing in London music halls. From the start of the new century, music hall artistes and theatre managers had been in dispute over working conditions, a reduction in pay and perks, and an increased number of matinée performances. The first significant rift was a 1906 strike, initiated by the Variety Artistes' Federation. The following year, the Music Hall War commenced, which saw the Federation fight for more freedom and better working conditions on behalf of music-hall performers. Although popular enough to command her own fees, Lloyd supported the strike, acted as a picket for the strikers and gave generously to the strike fund. To raise spirits, she often performed on picket lines and took part in a fundraising performance at the Scala Theatre. The dispute ended later the same year with a resolution broadly favourable to the performers. In 1909, Lloyd appeared at the Gaiety Theatre in Dundee where a critic for The Courier noted "Her bright smile and fascinating presence has much to do with her popularity, while her songs are of the catchy style, perhaps not what a Dundee audience is familiar with, but still amusing and of an attractive style." #### Relationship with Bernard Dillon Despite their marital problems, Lloyd went on an American tour with Hurley in 1908. She was eager to equal the success of her sister Alice, who had become popular in the country a few years previously. By 1910, Marie's relationship with Hurley had ended, due in part to her endless parties and her developing friendship with the jockey Bernard Dillon, winner of the 1910 Derby. Lloyd and the young sportsman began an open and passionate affair. For the first time, her private life eclipsed her professional career. She was seldom mentioned in the theatrical press in 1910, and when she did perform, it was not to the best of her abilities. The writer Arnold Bennett, who witnessed her on stage at the Tivoli Theatre in 1909, admitted that he "couldn't see the legendary cleverness of the vulgarity of Marie Lloyd" and accused her songs of being "variations of the same theme of sexual naughtiness." As with Courtenay years previously, the shy and retiring Dillon was finding it hard to adapt to Lloyd's elaborate and sociable lifestyle. Dillon's success on the racecourse was short lived. In 1911, he was expelled from the Jockey Club for borrowing £660 to bet on his own horses to win. Dillon's horses lost, and he ended up in debt to trainers. He became jealous of Lloyd's successful life in the spotlight. Depression led to drink and obesity, and he started to abuse her. Hurley, meanwhile, had initiated divorce proceedings, the strain of which caused him to drink heavily, which in turn finished his theatrical career. Lloyd left the marital home in Hampstead and moved to Golders Green with Dillon, a move which MacQueen-Pope describes as being "the worst thing she ever did." ### Later years A new show in London in 1912 showcased the best of music hall's talent. The Royal Command Performance took place at the Palace Theatre in London, which was managed by Alfred Butt. The show was organised by Oswald Stoll, an Australian impresario who managed a string of West End and provincial theatres. Stoll, although a fan of Lloyd's, disliked the vulgarity of her act and championed a return to a more family-friendly atmosphere within the music hall. Because of this, and her participation in the earlier music hall war, Stoll left her out of the line-up. He placed an advert in The Era on the day of the performance warning that "Coarseness and vulgarity etc are not allowed ... this intimation is rendered necessary only by a few artists". In retaliation, Lloyd staged her own show at the London Pavilion, advertising that "every one of her performances was a command performance by order of the British public". She performed "One Thing Leads to Another", "Oh Mr Porter", and "The Boy I Love Is up in the Gallery" and was hailed as "the Queen of Comedy" by critics. The same year, she travelled to Devon where she appeared at the Exeter Hippodrome to much success. The Devon and Exeter Gazette, reported that Lloyd's performance of "Every Movement Tells a Tale", was "thoroughly enjoyed" by the audience and "[received] round after round of applause". The paper also praised her recital of a "Cockney girl's honeymoon in Paris", which was met by "roars of laughter". #### Scandal in America In 1913, Lloyd was booked by the Orpheum Syndicate to appear at the New York Palace Theatre. She and Dillon set sail on the RMS Olympic under the name Mr and Mrs Dillon and were met at the American port by her sister Alice, who had resided in the country for many years. Upon arrival, Lloyd and Dillon were refused entry when the authorities found out that they were not married, as they had claimed when applying for entry visas. They were detained and threatened with deportation on the grounds of moral turpitude and were sent to Ellis Island while an enquiry took place. Dillon was charged under the White Slave Act with attempting to take into the country a woman who was not his wife, and Lloyd was charged with being a passive agent. After a lengthy enquiry, a surety of \$300 each, and an imposed condition that they were to live apart while in America, the couple were allowed to stay until March 1914. Alice later stated that "the indignity of the subsequent experience [while in custody] went to Marie's heart in a way she never survived. She could not bear to talk of that awful twenty-four hours." Despite the problems, the tour was a success, and Lloyd performed to packed theatres throughout America. Her act featured the songs "The Tiddly Wink", "I'd Like to Live in Paris All the Time (The Coster Girl in Paris)", and "The Aviator". The numbers were popular, partly due to the Americanisation of each song's lyrics. On a personal level, Lloyd's time in America was miserable and was made worse by the increasing domestic abuse she received from Dillon. The assaults caused her to miss several key performances, which angered the theatre manager, Edward Albee, who threatened her with a breach of contract action. She claimed that illness made it difficult for her to perform and protested at her billing position. The theatrical press were not convinced. The New York Telegraph speculated "In vaudeville circles her domestic relations are thought to be at the bottom of her attacks of disposition." Back in England, Hurley had died of pleurisy and pneumonia on 6 December 1913. Lloyd heard the news while appearing in Chicago and sent a wreath with a note saying "until we meet again". She was reported in The Morning Telegraph as saying: "With all due respect to the dead, I can cheerfully say that's the best piece of news I've heard in many years, for it means that Bernard Dillon and I will marry as soon as this unlucky year ends." Lloyd married Dillon on 21 February 1914, the ceremony taking place at the British Consulate in Portland, Oregon. When the tour finished, Lloyd commented, "[I will] never forget the humiliation to which I have been subjected and I shall never sing in America again, no matter how high the salary offered." #### First World War and final years Lloyd and Dillon returned to England in June 1914. Lloyd started a provincial tour of Liverpool, Aldershot, Southend, Birmingham and Margate, and finished the summer season at the London Hippodrome. She sang "The Coster Honeymoon in Paris" and "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs Rip Van Winkle?", the latter of which had been received particularly well with her American audiences. Within a fortnight, Britain was at war, which threw the music-hall world into disarray. The atmosphere in London's music halls had turned patriotic, and theatre proprietors often held charity events and benefits to help the war effort. Lloyd played her part and frequently visited hospitals, including the Ulster Volunteer Force Hospital in Belfast, where she interacted with wounded servicemen. She also toured munitions factories to help boost public morale, but received no official recognition for her work. During 1914, she scored a hit with "A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good", which critics thought captured her life perfectly up until that point. The song is about a middle-aged woman who encourages the younger generation to enjoy themselves, rather than indulging in life's excitement herself. During the rendition, Lloyd depicts a young couple who cuddle and kiss on a railway carriage, while she sits back and recalls memories of her doing the same in years gone by. In January 1915, Lloyd appeared at the Crystal Palace where she entertained over ten thousand troops. At the end of that year, she performed her only war song, "Now You've Got your Khaki On", composed for her by Charles Collins and Fred W. Leigh, about a woman who found the army uniform sexy and thought that wearing it made the average pot-bellied gentleman look like a muscle-toned soldier. Lloyd's brother John appeared with her on stage dressed as a soldier and helped characterise the ditty. Following this, she sang the already well-established songs "If You Want to Get On in Revue", which depicted a young girl who offered sexual favours to promote her theatrical career, and "The Three Ages of Woman", which took a cynical look at men from a woman's perspective. She seldom toured during the war, but briefly performed in Northampton, Watford and Nottingham in 1916. By the end of that year, she had suffered a nervous breakdown which she blamed on her hectic workload and a delayed reaction to Hurley's death. During the war years, Lloyd's public image had deteriorated. Her biographer Midge Gillies thought that Lloyd's violent relationship with Dillon and professional snubs in public had left the singer feeling like "someone's mother, rather than their sweetheart." In July 1916, Dillon was conscripted into the army, but disliked the discipline of regimental life. He applied for exemption on the grounds he had to look after his parents and four brothers, but his claim was rejected. In a later failed attempt, he tried to convince army officials that he was too obese to carry out military duties. On the rare occasions when Dillon was allowed home on leave, he would often indulge in drinking sessions. One night, Lloyd's friend Bella Burge answered a knock at the front door to find a hysterical Lloyd covered in blood and bruises. When asked to explain what had caused her injuries, she stated that she had caught Dillon in bed with another woman and had had a showdown with her husband. By 1917, Dillon's drinking had become worse. That June, two constables were called to Lloyd and Dillon's house in Golders Green after Dillon committed a drunken assault on his wife. Police entered the house and found Lloyd and her maid cowering beneath a table. Dillon confronted the constables and assaulted one of them, which resulted in him being taken to court, fined and sentenced to a month's hard labour. Lloyd began drinking to escape the trauma of her domestic abuse. That year, she was earning £470 per week performing in music halls and making special appearances. By 1918, she had become popular with the British-based American soldiers, but had failed to capture the spirits of their English counterparts, and began feeling sidelined by her peers; Vesta Tilley had led a very successful recruitment drive into the services, and other music hall performers had been honoured by royalty. The following year, she performed perhaps her best known song, "My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)", which was written for her by Fred W. Leigh and Charles Collins. The song depicts a mother fleeing her home to avoid the rent man. The lyrics reflected the hardships of working class life in London at the beginning of the 20th century, and gave her the chance to costume the character in a worn out dress and black straw boater, while carrying a birdcage. In July 1919, Lloyd was again left off the cast list for the Royal Variety Performance, which paid tribute to the acts who helped raise money and boost morale during the war years. She was devastated at the snub and grew bitter towards her rivals who had been acknowledged. Her biographer Midge Gillies compared Lloyd to a "talented old aunt who must be allowed to have her turn at the piano even though all everyone really wants is jazz or go to the Picture Palace". She toured Cardiff in 1919, and in 1920 she was earning £11,000 a year. Despite the high earnings, she was living beyond her means, with a reckless tendency to spend money. She was famous for her generosity, but was unable to differentiate between those in need and those who simply exploited her kindness. Her extravagant tastes, an accumulation of writs from disgruntled theatre managers, an inability to save money, and generous hand-outs to friends and family, resulted in severe money troubles during the final years of her life. ### Decline and death In 1920, Lloyd appeared twice at Hendon Magistrates Court and gave evidence of the abuse she had suffered from Dillon. Soon afterwards, she separated from him and, as a result, became depressed. When asked by prosecutors how many times Dillon had assaulted her since Christmas 1919, Lloyd replied "I cannot tell you, there were so many [occasions]. It has happened for years, time after time, always when he is drunk." By now, she was becoming increasingly unreliable on stage; she appeared at a theatre in Cardiff for a mere six minutes before being carried off by stage hands. During the performance, she seemed dazed and confused, and she stumbled across the stage. She was conscious of her weak performances and frequently cried between shows. Virginia Woolf was among the audience at the Bedford Music Hall on 8 April 1921 and described Lloyd as "A mass of corruption – long front teeth – a crapulous way of saying 'desire', and yet a born artist – scarcely able to walk, waddling, aged, unblushing." In April 1922, Lloyd collapsed in her dressing room after singing "The Cosmopolitan Girl" at the Gateshead Empire in Cardiff. Her doctor diagnosed exhaustion, and she returned to the stage in August. Her voice became weak, and she reduced her act to a much shorter running time. Her biographer Naomi Jacob thought that Lloyd was "growing old, and [she] was determined to show herself to her public as she really was ... an old, grey-faced, tired woman". On 12 August 1921, Lloyd failed to show for an appearance at the London Palladium, choosing instead to stay at home and write her will. In early 1922, Lloyd moved in with her sister Daisy to save money. On 4 October, against her doctor's advice, she appeared at the Empire Music Hall in Edmonton, North London, where she sang "I'm One of the Ruins That Cromwell Knocked About a Bit". Her performance was weak, and she was unsteady on her feet, eventually falling over on stage. Her erratic and brief performance proved hilarious for the audience, who thought that it was all part of the act. Three days later, while appearing at the Alhambra Theatre, she was taken ill on stage and was found later in her dressing room crippled with pain, complaining of stomach cramps. She returned home later that evening, where she died of heart and kidney failure, aged 52. More than 50,000 people attended her funeral at Hampstead Cemetery on 12 October 1922. Lloyd was penniless at the time of her death and her estate, which was worth £7,334, helped to pay off debts that she and Dillon had incurred over the years. In their announceent of Lloyd's death, The Times wrote: > In her the public loses not only a vivid personality whose range and extremely broad humour as a character actress were extraordinary, but also one of the few remaining links with the old music-hall stage of the last century. Writing in The Dial magazine the following month, T. S. Eliot claimed: "Among [the] small number of music-hall performers, whose names are familiar to what is called the lower class, Marie Lloyd had far the strongest hold on popular affection." Her biographer and friend MacQueen-Pope thought that Lloyd was "going downhill of her own volition. The complaint was incurable, some might call it heartbreak, perhaps a less sentimental diagnosis is disillusionment." The impersonator Charles Austin paid tribute by saying "I have lost an old pal, and the public has lost its principal stage favourite, one who can never be replaced."

Terra Nova Expedition

1910–13 British Antarctic expedition

The Terra Nova Expedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition, was an expedition to Antarctica which took place between 1910 and 1913. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition had various scientific and geographical objectives. Scott wished to continue the scientific work that he had begun when leading the Discovery Expedition from 1901 to 1904, and wanted to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole. He and four companions attained the pole on 17 January 1912, where they found that a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen had preceded them by 34 days. Scott's party of five died on the return journey from the pole; some of their bodies, journals, and photographs were found by a search party eight months later. The expedition, named after its supply ship, was a private venture financed by public contributions and a government grant. It had further backing from the Admiralty, which released experienced seamen to the expedition, and from the Royal Geographical Society. The expedition's team of scientists carried out a comprehensive scientific programme, while other parties explored Victoria Land and the Western Mountains. An attempted landing and exploration of King Edward VII Land was unsuccessful. A journey to Cape Crozier in June and July 1911 was the first extended sledging journey in the depths of the Antarctic winter. For many years after his death, Scott's status as tragic hero was unchallenged and few questions were asked about the causes of the disaster which overcame his polar party. In the final quarter of the 20th century the expedition came under closer scrutiny, and more critical views were expressed about its organization and management. The degree of Scott's personal culpability and, more recently, the culpability of certain expedition members, remains controversial. ## Preparations ### Background After RRS Discovery'''s return from the Antarctic in 1904, Captain Robert Falcon Scott eventually resumed his naval career but continued to nurse ambitions of returning south, with the conquest of the South Pole as his specific target. The Discovery Expedition had made a significant contribution to Antarctic scientific and geographical knowledge, but in terms of penetration southward had reached only 82° 17' and had not traversed the Great Ice Barrier. In 1909, Scott received news that Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition had narrowly failed to reach the Pole. Starting from a base close to Scott's Discovery anchorage in McMurdo Sound, Shackleton had crossed the Great Ice Barrier, discovered the Beardmore Glacier route to the Polar Plateau, and had struck out for the Pole. He had been forced to turn for home at 88° 23' S, less than 100 geographical miles (112 miles (180 km)) from his objective. Scott had claimed the McMurdo Sound area as his own "field of work", and Shackleton's use of the area as a base was in breach of an undertaking he gave Scott. This soured relations between the two explorers, and increased Scott's determination to surpass Shackleton's achievements. As he made his preparations for a further expedition, Scott was aware of other impending polar ventures. A Japanese expedition was being planned; the Australasian Antarctic Expedition under Douglas Mawson was to leave in 1911, but would be working in a different sector of the continent; and Roald Amundsen, a potential rival from Norway, had also announced plans for an Arctic voyage. ### Personnel 65 men (including replacements) formed the shore and ship's parties of the Terra Nova Expedition. They were chosen from 8,000 applicants, and included seven Discovery veterans together with five who had been with Shackleton on his 1907–1909 expedition. Lieutenant Edward Evans, who had been the navigating officer on Morning, the Discovery Expedition's relief ship in 1904, was appointed Scott's second-in-command. Evans had abandoned plans to mount his own expedition and transferred his financial backing to Scott. Among the other serving Royal Navy personnel released by the Admiralty were Lieutenant Harry Pennell, who would serve as navigator and take command of Terra Nova once the shore parties had landed; and two Surgeon-Lieutenants, George Murray Levick and Edward L. Atkinson. Ex-Royal Navy officer Victor Campbell, known as "The Wicked Mate", was one of the few who had skills in skiing, and was chosen to lead the party that would explore King Edward VII Land. Two non-Royal Navy officers were appointed: Henry Robertson Bowers ("Birdie"), who was a lieutenant in the Royal Indian Marine, and Lawrence Oates ("Titus"), an Army captain from the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons. Oates, independently wealthy, volunteered and his services to the expedition. The Admiralty also provided a largely naval lower deck, including the Antarctic veterans Edgar Evans (no relation to Edward Evans), Tom Crean and William Lashly. Other seamen in the shore party included Patrick Keohane, Robert Forde, Thomas Clissold (cook) and Frederick Hooper (domestic steward). Dimitri Gerov [ru] (dog driver), a Russian, and Anton Omelchenko [ru] (groom), a Ukrainian, also landed. To head his scientific programme, Scott appointed Edward Wilson as chief scientist. Wilson was Scott's closest confidant among the party; on the Discovery Expedition he had accompanied Scott on the Farthest South march to 80°S. As well as being a qualified medical doctor and a distinguished research zoologist, he was also a talented illustrator. Wilson's scientific team—which Scott's biographer David Crane considered "as impressive a group of scientists as had ever been on a polar expedition"—included some who would enjoy later careers of distinction: meteorologist George Simpson; Canadian physicist Charles Wright; and geologists Frank Debenham and Raymond Priestley. Senior geologist T. Griffith Taylor, biologists Edward W. Nelson and Denis G. Lillie, and assistant zoologist Apsley Cherry-Garrard completed the team. Cherry-Garrard had no scientific training, but was a protégé of Wilson's. He had, like Oates, contributed £1,000 to funds. After first being turned down by Scott, he allowed his contribution to stand, which impressed Scott sufficiently for him to reverse his decision. Crane describes Cherry-Garrard as "the future interpreter, historian and conscience of the expedition." Herbert Ponting was the expedition's photographer, whose pictures would leave a vivid visual record. On the advice of explorer Fridtjof Nansen, Scott recruited a young Norwegian ski expert, Tryggve Gran. ### Transport Scott had decided on a mixed transport strategy, relying on contributions from dogs, motor sledges and ponies. He appointed Cecil Meares to take charge of the dog teams and recruited Shackleton's former motor specialist, Bernard Day, to run the motor sledges. Oates would be in charge of the ponies, but as he could not join the expedition until May 1910, Scott instructed Meares, who knew nothing of horses, to buy them—with unfortunate consequences for their quality and performance. A "polarised" motor car had been unsuccessfully tried in the Antarctic by Shackleton, on his 1907–1909 expedition, while his pioneering use of ponies had transported him as far as the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. Scott believed that ponies had served Shackleton well, and he thought he could resolve the motor traction problem by developing a tracked snow "motor" (the forerunner of the Snowcat and of the tank). Scott always intended to rely on man-hauling for the Polar Plateau, believing it impossible to ascend the Beardmore Glacier with motors or with animals. The motors and animals would be used to haul loads only across the Barrier, enabling the men to preserve their strength for the later Glacier and Plateau stages. In practice, the motor sledges proved only briefly useful, and the ponies' performance was affected by their age and poor condition. As to dogs, while Scott's experiences on Discovery had made him dubious of their reliability, his writings show that he recognised their effectiveness in the right hands. As the expedition developed, he became increasingly impressed with their capabilities. ### Finance Unlike the Discovery Expedition, where fundraising was handled jointly by the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the Terra Nova Expedition was organised as a private venture without significant institutional support. Scott estimated the total cost at £40,000, half of which was eventually met by a government grant. The balance was raised by public subscription and loans. The expedition was further assisted by the free supply of a range of provisions and equipment from sympathetic commercial firms. The fund-raising task was largely carried out by Scott, and was a considerable drain on his time and energy, continuing in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand after Terra Nova had sailed from British waters. By far the largest single cost was the purchase of the ship Terra Nova, for £12,500. Terra Nova had been in Antarctica before, as part of the second Discovery relief operation. Scott wanted to sail her as a naval vessel under the White Ensign; to enable this, he obtained membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron for £100. He was thus able to impose naval discipline on the expedition, and as a registered yacht of the Squadron, Terra Nova became exempt from Board of Trade regulations which might otherwise have deemed her unfit to sail. ### Objectives Scott defined the objects of the expedition in his initial public appeal: "The main objective of this expedition is to reach the South Pole, and to secure for the British Empire the honour of this achievement." There were other objectives, both scientific and geographical; the scientific work was considered by Wilson as the main work of the expedition: "No one can say that it will have only been a Pole-hunt ... We want the scientific work to make the bagging of the Pole merely an item in the results." He hoped to continue investigations, begun during the Discovery Expedition, of the emperor penguin colony at Cape Crozier and to fulfil a programme of geological, magnetic and meteorology studies on an "unprecedented" scale. There were further plans to explore King Edward VII Land, a venture described by Campbell, who was to lead it, as "the thing of the whole expedition", and Victoria Land. ## First season, 1910–1911 ### Voyage out Terra Nova sailed from Cardiff on 15 June 1910. Scott, detained by expedition business, sailed later on a faster passenger liner and joined the ship in South Africa. In Melbourne he left Terra Nova to continue fund-raising while the ship proceeded to New Zealand. Waiting for Scott in Melbourne was a telegram from Amundsen, informing Scott that the Norwegian was "proceeding south"; the telegram was the first indication to Scott that he was in a race. When asked by the press for a reaction, Scott replied that his plans would not change and that he would not sacrifice the expedition's scientific goals to win the race to the Pole. In his diary he wrote that Amundsen had a fair chance of success, and perhaps deserved his luck if he got through. Scott rejoined Terra Nova in New Zealand, where additional supplies were taken aboard, including 34 dogs, 19 Siberian ponies and three motorised sledges. The ship, heavily overladen, finally left Port Chalmers on 29 November. During the first days of December the ship was struck by a heavy storm; at one point, with the ship taking heavy seas and the pumps having failed, the crew had to bail her out with buckets. The storm resulted in the loss of two ponies, a dog, 10 long tons (10,000 kg) of coal and 65 imperial gallons (300 L) of petrol. On 10 December, Terra Nova met the southern pack ice and was halted, remaining for twenty days before breaking clear and continuing southward. The delay, which Scott attributed to "sheer bad luck", had consumed 6.1 long tons (6,200 kg) of coal. ### Cape Evans base Arriving off Ross Island on 4 January 1911, Terra Nova scouted for possible landing sites around Cape Crozier at the eastern point of the island, before proceeding to McMurdo Sound to its west, where both Discovery and Nimrod had previously landed. After Scott had considered various possible wintering spots, he chose a cape remembered from the Discovery days as the "Skuary", about 15 miles (24 km) north of Scott's 1902 base at Hut Point. Scott hoped that this location, which he renamed Cape Evans after his second-in-command, would be free of ice in the short Antarctic summer, enabling the ship to come and go. As the seas to the south froze over, the expedition would have ready access over the ice to Hut Point and the Barrier. At Cape Evans the shore parties disembarked, with the ponies, dogs, the three motorised sledges (one of which was lost during unloading), and the bulk of the party's stores. Scott was "astonished at the strength of the ponies" as they transferred stores and materials from ship to shore. A prefabricated accommodation hut measuring 50 by 25 feet (15.2 m × 7.6 m) was erected and made habitable by 18 January. ### Amundsen's camp Scott's programme included a plan to explore and carry out scientific work in King Edward VII Land, to the east of the Barrier. A party under Campbell was organised for this purpose, with the option of exploring Victoria Land to the north-west if King Edward VII Land proved inaccessible. On 26 January, Campbell's party left in the ship and headed east. After several failed attempts to land his party on the King Edward VII Land shore, Campbell exercised his option to sail to Victoria Land. On its return westward along the Barrier edge, Terra Nova encountered Amundsen's expedition camped in the Bay of Whales, an inlet in the Barrier. Amundsen was courteous and hospitable, willing for Campbell to camp nearby and offering him help with his dogs. Campbell politely declined, and returned with his party to Cape Evans to report this development. Scott received the news on 22 February, during the first depot-laying expedition. According to Cherry-Garrard, the first reaction of Scott and his party was an urge to rush over to the Bay of Whales and "have it out" with Amundsen. Scott recorded the event calmly in his journal. "One thing only fixes itself in my mind. The proper, as well as the wiser, course is for us to proceed exactly as though this had not happened. To go forward and do our best for the honour of our country without fear or panic." ### Depot laying The aim of the first season's depot-laying was to place a series of depots on the Barrier from its edge—Safety Camp—down to 80°S, for use on the polar journey which would begin the following spring. The final depot would be the largest, and would be known as One Ton Depot. The work was to be carried out by 12 men, the eight fittest ponies, and two dog teams; ice conditions prevented the use of the motor sledges. The journey started on 27 January "in a state of hurry bordering on panic", according to Cherry-Garrard. Progress was slower than expected, and the ponies' performance was adversely affected because Oates was opposed to using Norwegian snowshoes and had left them behind at Cape Evans. On 4 February, the party established Corner Camp, 40 miles (64 km) from Hut Point, when a blizzard held them up for three days. A few days later, after the march had resumed, Scott sent the three weakest ponies home (two died en route). As the depot-laying party approached 80°, he became concerned that the remaining ponies would not make it back to base unless the party turned north immediately. Against the advice of Oates, who wanted to go forward, killing the ponies for meat as they collapsed, Scott decided to lay One Ton Depot at 79°29′S, more than 30 miles (48 km) short of its intended location. Scott returned to Safety Camp with the dogs, after risking his own life to rescue a dog-team that had fallen into a crevasse. When the slower pony party arrived, one of the animals was in very poor condition and died shortly afterwards. Later, as the surviving ponies were crossing the sea ice near Hut Point, the ice broke up. Despite a determined rescue attempt, three more ponies died. Of the eight ponies that had begun the depot-laying journey, only two returned home. ### Winter quarters On 23 April, the sun set for the duration of the winter months, and the party settled into the Cape Evans hut. Under Scott's naval regime the hut was divided by a wall made of packing cases, so that officers and men lived largely separate existences, scientists being deemed "officers" for this purpose. Everybody was kept busy; scientific work continued, observations and measurements were taken, equipment was overhauled and adapted for future journeys. The surviving ponies needed daily exercise, and the dogs required regular attention. Scott spent much time calculating sledging rations and weights for the forthcoming polar march. The routine included regular lectures on a wide range of subjects: Ponting on Japan, Wilson on sketching, Oates on horse management and geologist Debenham on volcanoes. To ensure that physical fitness was maintained there were frequent games of football in the half-light outside the hut; Scott recorded that, "Atkinson is by far the best player, but Hooper, P.O. Evans and Crean are also quite good." The South Polar Times, which had been produced by Shackleton during the Discovery Expedition, was resurrected under Cherry-Garrard's editorship. On 6 June, a feast was arranged to mark Scott's 43rd birthday; a second celebration on 21 June marked Midwinter Day, the day that marks the midpoint of the long polar night. ## Main expedition journeys, 1911–1912 ### Northern Party After reporting Amundsen's arrival to Scott at Cape Evans, Campbell's Eastern party (Campbell, Priestley, Levick, George P. Abbott, Harry Dickason) and Frank V. Browning became the "Northern Party". On 9 February 1911 they sailed northwards, arriving at Robertson Bay, near Cape Adare on 17 February, where they built a hut close to Norwegian explorer Carstens Borchgrevink's old quarters. The Northern Party spent the 1911 winter in their hut. Their exploration plans for the summer of 1911–1912 could not be fully carried out, partly because of the condition of the sea ice and also because they were unable to discover a route into the interior. Terra Nova returned from New Zealand on 4 January 1912, and transferred the party to the vicinity of Evans Cove, a location approximately 250 miles (400 km) south of Cape Adare and 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Cape Evans. They were to be picked up on 18 February after the completion of further geological work, but due to heavy pack ice, the ship was unable to reach them. The group, with meagre rations which they had to supplement by fish and seal meat, were forced to spend the winter months of 1912 in a snow cave which they excavated on Inexpressible Island. Here they suffered severe privations—frostbite, dysentery and hunger, with extreme winds and low temperatures, and the discomfort of a blubber stove in confined quarters. On 17 April 1912 a party under Atkinson, in command at Cape Evans during the absence of the polar party, went to relieve Campbell's party but were beaten back by the weather. The Northern Party survived the winter in their icy chamber, and set out for the base camp on 30 September 1912. Despite their physical weakness, the whole party managed to reach Cape Evans on 7 November, after a perilous journey which included a crossing of the difficult Drygalski Ice Tongue. Geological and other specimens collected by the Northern Party were retrieved from Cape Adare and Evans Cove by Terra Nova in January 1913. ### Western geological parties #### First geological expedition, January–March 1911 The objective of this journey was geological exploration of the coastal area west of McMurdo Sound, in a region between the McMurdo Dry Valleys and the Koettlitz Glacier. This work was undertaken by a party consisting of Taylor, Debenham, Wright and Edgar Evans. They landed from Terra Nova on 26 January at Butter Point, opposite Cape Evans on the Victoria Land shore. On 30 January, the party established its main depot in the Ferrar Glacier region, and then conducted explorations and survey work in the Dry Valley and Taylor Glacier areas before moving southwards to the Koettlitz Glacier. After further work there, they started homewards on 2 March, taking a southerly route to Hut Point, where they arrived on 14 March. #### Second geological expedition, November 1911 – February 1912 This was a continuation of the work carried out in the earlier journey, this time concentrating on Granite Harbour region approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of Butter Point. Taylor's companions this time were Debenham, Gran and Forde. The main journey began on 14 November and involved difficult travel over sea ice to Granite Harbour, which was reached on 26 November. Headquarters were established at a site christened Geology Point, and a stone hut was built. During the following weeks, exploration and surveying work took place on the Mackay Glacier, and a range of features to the north of the glacier were identified and named. The party was due to be picked up by Terra Nova on 15 January 1912, but the ship could not reach them. The party waited until 5 February before trekking southward, and were rescued from the ice when they were finally spotted from the ship on 18 February. Geological specimens from both Western Mountains expeditions were retrieved by Terra Nova in January 1913. ### Winter journey to Cape Crozier This journey was conceived by Wilson. He had suggested the need for it in the Zoology section of the Discovery Expedition's Scientific Reports, and was anxious to follow up this earlier research. The journey's scientific purpose was to secure emperor penguin eggs from the rookery near Cape Crozier at an early embryo stage, so that "particular points in the development of the bird could be worked out". This required a trip in the depths of winter to obtain eggs in an appropriately early stage of incubation. A secondary purpose was to experiment with food rations and equipment in advance of the coming summer's polar journey. Scott approved, and a party consisting of Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard set out on 27 June 1911. Travelling during the Antarctic winter had not been previously tried; Scott wrote that it was "a bold venture, but the right men have gone to attempt it." Cherry-Garrard later described the horrors of the 19 days it took to travel the 60 miles (97 km) to Cape Crozier. Gear, clothes, and sleeping bags were constantly iced up; on 5 July, the temperature fell below −77 °F (−61 °C)—"109 degrees of frost—as cold as anyone would want to endure in darkness and iced up clothes", wrote Cherry-Garrard. Often the daily distance travelled was little more than a single mile. After reaching Cape Crozier on 15 July, the party built an igloo from snow blocks, stone, and a sheet of wood they had brought for the roof. They were then able to visit the penguin colony and collect several emperor penguin eggs. Subsequently, their igloo shelter was almost destroyed in a blizzard with winds of force 11 on the Beaufort scale. The storm also carried away the tent upon which their survival would depend during their return journey, but fortunately this was recovered half a mile away. The group set out on the return journey to Cape Evans, arriving there on 1 August. The three eggs that survived the journey went first to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, and thereafter were the subject of a report from Cossar Stewart at the University of Edinburgh. The eggs failed to support Wilson's theories. Cherry-Garrard afterwards described this as the "worst journey in the world", and used this as the title of the book that he wrote about the expedition. Scott called the Winter Journey "a very wonderful performance", and was highly satisfied with the experiments in rations and equipment: "We are as near perfection as experience can direct." ### South polar journey #### The Barrier: southward On 13 September 1911, Scott revealed his plans for the South Pole march. Sixteen men would set out, using the two remaining motor sledges, ponies and dogs for the Barrier stage of the journey, which would bring them to the Beardmore Glacier. At this point the dogs would return to base and the ponies would be shot for food. Thereafter, 12 men in three groups would ascend the glacier and begin the crossing of the polar plateau, using man-hauling. Only one of these groups would carry on to the pole; the supporting groups would be sent back at specified latitudes. The composition of the final polar group would be decided by Scott during the journey. For the return journey, Scott ordered that the dog teams set off again from the base camp to replenish depots and meet the polar party between latitude 82 and 82.30 on 1 March to assist the party home. The motor party, consisting of Lieutenant Evans, Day, Lashly, and Hooper, started from Cape Evans on 24 October, with two motor sledges, their objective being to haul loads to latitude 80° 30' S and wait there for the others. By 1 November, both motor sledges had failed after little more than 50 miles (80 km) of travel, so the party man-hauled 740 pounds (336 kg) of supplies for the remaining 150 miles (240 km) reaching their assigned latitude two weeks later. Scott's main party, which had left Cape Evans on 1 November with the dogs and ponies, caught up with them on 21 November. Scott's initial plan was that the dogs would return to base at this stage. Because of slower than expected progress, he decided to take the dogs on further. Day and Hooper were dispatched to Cape Evans with a message to this effect for Simpson, who had been left in charge there. On 4 December, the expedition had reached the Gateway, the name given by Shackleton to the route from the Barrier on to the Beardmore Glacier. At this point a blizzard struck, forcing the men to camp until 9 December, and to break into rations intended for the Glacier journey. When the blizzard lifted, the remaining ponies were shot as planned, and their meat deposited as food for the return parties. On 11 December, Meares and Dimitri turned back with the dogs, carrying a message back to base that "things were not as rosy as they might be, but we keep our spirits up and say the luck must turn." #### Beardmore ascent The party began the ascent of the Beardmore, and on 20 December, reached the beginning of the polar plateau where they laid the Upper Glacier Depot. There was still no hint from Scott as to who would be in the final polar party. On 22 December, at latitude 85° 20' S, Scott sent back Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane. Scott reminded Atkinson "to take the two dog-teams south in the event of Meares having to return home, as seemed likely" to assist the polar party on its return journey the following March. The remaining eight men continued south, in better conditions which enabled them to make up some of the time lost on the Barrier. By 30 December, they had "caught up" with Shackleton's 1908–1909 timetable. On 3 January 1912, at latitude 87° 32' S, Scott made his decision on the composition of the polar party: five men (Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Edgar Evans) would go forward while Lieutenant Evans, Lashly and Crean would return to Cape Evans. The decision to take five men forward involved recalculations of weights and rations, since everything had been based on four-men teams. #### South Pole The polar group continued towards the Pole, passing Shackleton's Farthest South (88° 23' S) on 9 January. Seven days later, about 15 miles (25 km) from their goal, Amundsen's black flag was spotted and the party knew that they had been forestalled. They reached the Pole the next day, 17 January: "The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected ... Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority. Well, it is something to have got here." Scott still hoped to race Amundsen to the telegraph cablehead in Australia: "Now for a desperate struggle to get the news through first. I wonder if we can do it." On 18 January they discovered Amundsen's tent, some supplies, a letter to King Haakon VII of Norway (which Amundsen politely asked Scott to deliver), and a note stating that Amundsen had arrived there with four companions on 14 December 1911. #### The last march After confirming their position and planting their flag, Scott's party turned homewards. During the next three weeks they made good progress, Scott's diary recording several "excellent marches". Nevertheless, Scott began to worry about the physical condition of his party, particularly of Edgar Evans, who was suffering from severe frostbite and was, Scott records, "a good deal run down." The condition of Oates's feet became an increasing anxiety as the group approached the summit of the Beardmore Glacier and prepared for the descent to the Barrier. On 7 February, they began their descent and had serious difficulty locating a depot. In a brief spell of good weather, Scott ordered a half-day's rest, allowing Wilson to "geologise"; 30 pounds (14 kg) of fossil-bearing samples were added to the sledges. These plant fossils were later used to support the theory of continental drift. Evans's health was deteriorating; a hand injury was failing to heal, he was badly frostbitten, and he is thought to have injured his head after several falls on the ice. "He is absolutely changed from his normal self-reliant self", wrote Scott. Near the bottom of the glacier Evans collapsed, and died on 17 February. On the Barrier stage of the homeward march, Scott reached the 82° 30' S meeting point for the dog teams, three days ahead of schedule, noting in his diary for 27 February 1912: "We are naturally always discussing possibility of meeting dogs, where and when, etc. It is a critical position. We may find ourselves in safety at the next depot, but there is a horrid element of doubt." The party then met with three, ultimately critical, difficulties: the non-appearance of the dog teams, an unexpected large drop in temperature and a shortage of fuel in the depots. The low temperatures caused poor surfaces which Scott likened to "pulling over desert sand"; he described the surface as "coated with a thin layer of woolly crystals, formed by radiation no doubt. These are too firmly fixed to be removed by the wind and cause impossible friction on the [sledge] runners." The low temperatures were accompanied by an absence of wind, something Scott had expected to assist them on their northern journey. The party were further slowed down by the frostbite in Oates' left foot. Daily marches were now down to less than five miles (8 km), which was insufficient given the lack of oil. By March 10, it became evident the dog teams were not coming: "The dogs which would have been our salvation have evidently failed. Meares [the dog-driver] had a bad trip home I suppose." In a farewell letter to Sir Edgar Speyer, dated March 16, Scott wondered whether he had overshot the meeting point and fought the growing suspicion that he had in fact been abandoned by the dog teams: "We very nearly came through, and it's a pity to have missed it, but lately I have felt that we have overshot our mark. No-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we had lacked support." On the same day, Oates, who "now with hands as well as feet pretty well useless", voluntarily left the tent and walked to his death. Scott wrote that Oates' last words were, "I am just going outside and may be some time". #### Eleven miles Oates' sacrifice increased the team's speed but it was too late to save them, especially since Scott's right toes were now becoming frostbitten. Scott, Wilson and Bowers struggled on to a point 11 miles (18 km) south of One Ton Depot, but were halted on 20 March, by a fierce blizzard. Although each day they attempted to advance, they were unable to do so. Scott's last diary entry, dated 29 March 1912, the presumed date of their deaths, ends with these words: > Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. Last entry. For God's sake look after our people. ## Attempts to relieve the polar party, 1912 ### Orders concerning dogs Before setting out on the South Pole journey, Scott had made arrangements intended to help the polar party home with the use of dogs. Meares, who was expected to have returned to Cape Evans by 19 December, had been instructed that in late December or early January he should transport to One Ton Depot "Five XS rations [XS = "Extra Summit Ration", food for four men for one week], 3 cases of biscuit, 5 gallons of oil and as much dog food as you can conveniently carry". If this mission could not be carried out by dogs, then "at all hazard" a man-hauling team was to carry the XS rations to the depot. Meares had been further instructed that in about the first week in February, depending on news received from returning units, he should set out, with dogs, with a view to meeting the returning polar party between latitudes 82° or 82°30' on about 1 March. The objective of these orders was to hasten the party back to Cape Evans before Terra Nova left so that news of the polar conquest could be carried immediately to New Zealand. Scott placed greater emphasis on the former journey than on the latter: "Whilst the object of your third journey is important, that of the second is vital". The substance of these orders was reiterated to Atkinson when he left Scott at the top of the Beardmore Glacier on 22 December 1911. Several events occurred to obscure and ultimately frustrate this order. The fact that Meares had turned back from the polar march much later than originally planned meant that he did not return to Cape Evans until 5 January. Huntford suggests he resigned at this point because he was "disgusted" with Scott's expedition. Fiennes in contrast quotes from a letter by Cherry-Garrard in 1938 that Meares had been ready at Cape Evans to resupply One Ton Depot as ordered, when he had seen the ship arrive in the bay and so stayed at base—the "ship" turned out to be a mirage, and the real ship did not arrive until mid-February. According to Fiennes, Meares was preoccupied with his late father's estate and was anxious to leave on the ship as soon as he could. Three of the XS rations required for One Ton Depot had been man-hauled there by a party which left Cape Evans on 26 December, but neither Meares nor anyone else transported the missing rations or the dog food to One Ton Depot. ### Atkinson's aborted journey to meet Scott When Atkinson arrived back at Cape Evans from the Beardmore Glacier at the end of January, he was the senior officer present and thus in command of the base camp, a role to which he was not accustomed. Terra Nova arrived from her winter mooring in New Zealand on 9 February, and instead of setting off for Scott, Atkinson used the shore party for the arduous task of unloading the ship—a mistake, Cherry-Garrard thought, since these men might be required to sledge again. Belatedly, on 13 February, Atkinson set out with Dimitri Gerov and the dog teams for the scheduled meeting with Scott on the Barrier, reaching Hut Point 13 miles (21 km) south before being delayed by bad weather. During the final returning party's journey, Lieutenant Evans had become seriously ill with scurvy. After One Ton Depot he was unable to march, and was carried on the sledge by Crean and Lashly to a point 35 miles (56 km) south of Hut Point. At that point he appeared likely to die. On 18 February, Crean walked on alone to reach Hut Point (covering 35 miles (56 km) of difficult terrain in only 18 hours), where he found Atkinson and Dimitri with their dogs, pausing in their journey to meet Scott. Atkinson diverted his attention to the rescue of Evans, whom he brought to Hut Point, barely alive, on 22 February. From that point, Atkinson's priority was to bring Evans to the safety of the ship. ### Cherry-Garrard's journey to One Ton Depot With Atkinson thus occupied, an alternative arrangement to pick up Scott was necessary. Disregarding Meares, who was "not available for work", the most qualified person available to meet Scott's party was the physicist Wright, an experienced traveller and navigator, but the chief scientist Simpson insisted Wright's scientific work be given priority. Atkinson therefore chose Cherry-Garrard. Lieutenant Evans wrote later that he thought Scott would have approved the decision to keep Wright at the base camp. Cherry-Garrard would be accompanied by Dimitri. In his 1922 book The Worst Journey, Cherry-Garrard recalled the controversial verbal orders given by Atkinson. He was to travel to One Ton Depot as fast as possible, where he was to leave food for the returning polar party. If Scott had not arrived before him, Cherry-Garrard should decide "what to do". Atkinson also emphasised that this was not a rescue party, and added that Scott had given instructions that the dogs were "not to be risked in view of the sledging plans for next season". In the standard edition of his book, Cherry-Garrard omitted any mention of Scott's request to be picked up at 82° or 82°30' on 1 March. But after Atkinson's and Lady Scott's deaths in 1929 and 1947 respectively, in a postscript to his privately published 1948 edition, Cherry-Garrard acknowledged the existence of Scott's order and provided reasons why Atkinson, and later he himself, failed to comply: Atkinson was too exhausted at the beginning of February to set off to meet Scott, and the lack of dog food at One Ton Depot made a timely start impractical. Karen May of the Scott Polar Research Institute goes further by suggesting that the instruction about saving the dogs for the following season was Atkinson's own invention. Cherry-Garrard left Hut Point with Dimitri and two dog teams on 26 February, arriving at One Ton Depot on 4 March and depositing the extra rations. Scott was not there. With supplies for themselves and the dogs for twenty-four days, they had about eight days' time before having to return to Hut Point. The alternative to waiting was moving southwards for another four days. Any travel beyond that, in the absence of the dog food depot, would mean killing dogs for dog food as they went along, thus breaching Atkinson's "not to be risked" order. Cherry-Garrard argued that the weather was too poor for further travel, with daytime temperatures as low as −37 °F (−38 °C), and that he might miss Scott if leaving the depot, and thus decided to wait for Scott. On 10 March, in worsening weather and with his own supplies dwindling, Cherry-Garrard turned for home. Meanwhile, Scott's team were fighting for their lives less than 70 miles (113 km) away. Atkinson would later write, "I am satisfied that no other officer of the expedition could have done better". Cherry-Garrard was troubled for the rest of his life by thoughts that he might have taken other actions that could have saved the polar party. ### Atkinson's final relief effort When Cherry-Garrard returned from One Ton Depot without Scott's party, anxieties rose. Atkinson, now in charge at Cape Evans as the senior naval officer present, decided to make another attempt to reach the polar party when the weather permitted, and on 26 March set out with Keohane, man-hauling a sledge containing 18 days' provisions. In very low temperatures (−40 °F (−40 °C)) they had reached Corner Camp by 30 March, when, in Atkinson's view, the weather, the cold and the time of year made further progress south impossible. Atkinson recorded, "In my own mind I was morally certain that the [polar] party had perished". ## Search party, October 1912 The remaining expedition members still at Cape Evans waited through the winter, continuing their scientific work. In the spring Atkinson had to consider whether efforts should first be directed to the rescue of Campbell's Northern Party, or to establishing if possible the fate of the polar party. A meeting of the whole group decided that they should first search for signs of Scott. The party set out on 29 October, accompanied by a team of mules that had been landed from Terra Nova during its resupply visit the previous summer. On 12 November the party found the tent containing the frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers, 11 miles (18 km) south of One Ton Depot. Atkinson read the relevant portions of Scott's diaries, and the nature of the disaster was revealed. After diaries, personal effects and records had been collected, the tent was collapsed over the bodies and a cairn of snow erected, topped by a cross fashioned from Gran's skis. The party searched further south for Oates's body, but found only his sleeping bag. On 15 November, they raised a cairn near to where they believed he had died. On returning to Hut Point on 25 November, the search party found that the Northern Party had rescued itself and had returned safely to base. Early in the morning of 10 February 1913, Atkinson and Pennell rowed into the New Zealand port of Oamaru, from where they sent a coded message back to the expedition's New Zealand agent, Joseph Kinsey, informing him of the fate of Scott and his party. Atkinson and Pennell then boarded a train to meet Terra Nova in Lyttelton near Christchurch. ## Aftermath As Campbell was now the senior naval officer of the expedition, he assumed command for its final weeks until the arrival of Terra Nova on 18 January 1913. Before the final departure a large wooden cross was erected on the slopes of Observation Hill, overlooking Hut Point, inscribed with the five names of the dead and a quotation from Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". The loss of Scott and his party overshadowed all else in the British public's mind, including Amundsen's feat in being first at the Pole. For many years the image of Scott as a tragic hero, beyond reproach, remained almost unchallenged, for although there were rifts among some who were close to the expedition, including relatives of those who died, this disharmony was not public. There was no real change in public perceptions until the 1970s, by which time nearly all those directly concerned with the expedition were dead. Controversy was ignited with the publication of Roland Huntford's book Scott and Amundsen (1979, re-published and televised in 1985 as The Last Place on Earth). Huntford was critical of Scott's supposedly authoritarian leadership style and of his poor judgment of men, and blamed him for a series of organisational failures that led to the death of everyone in the polar party. Scott's personal standing suffered from these attacks; efforts to restore his reputation have included the account by Ranulph Fiennes (a direct rebuttal of Huntford's version), Susan Solomon's scientific analysis of the weather conditions that ultimately defeated Scott, David Cranes's 2005 biography of Scott, and Karen May's new analysis of Scott's disobeyed orders specifying that the dog teams transport his returning party swiftly back to the base camp. In comparing the achievements of Scott and Amundsen, most polar historians generally accept that Amundsen's skills with ski and dogs, his general familiarity with ice conditions, and his clear focus on a non-scientific expedition gave him considerable advantages in the race for the Pole. Scott's verdict on the disaster that overtook his party, written when he was close to death, lists the initial loss of pony transport, weather conditions, "a shortage of fuel in our depots for which I cannot account", and the sickening of Evans and Oates, but ultimately Scott concludes that "our wreck is certainly due to this sudden advent of severe weather [...] on the Barrier [...] −30 °F (−34 °C) in the day, −47 °F (−44 °C) at night". Presumably with regard to the failed rendezvous with the dog teams requested for 1 March 1912, Scott furthermore wrote, "No-one is to blame and I hope no attempt will be made to suggest that we have lacked support". Cherry-Garrard, whom Atkinson placed in charge of the dog teams which started late, failed to meet Scott and turned for home, observes that "the whole business simply bristles with 'ifs'"; an accumulation of decisions and circumstances that might have fallen differently ultimately led to catastrophe. But "we were as wise as anyone can be before the event." After suffering irreversible damage while carrying supplies to base stations in Greenland, Terra Nova was set on fire and later sunk by gunfire off the southern coast of Greenland on 13 September 1943, at . Its submerged remains were found in 2012. ## Scientific legacy The scientific contributions of the expedition were long overshadowed by the deaths of Scott and his party. The 12 scientists who participated—the largest Antarctic scientific team of its time—made important discoveries in zoology, botany, geology, glaciology, and meteorology. The Terra Nova returned to England with over 2,100 plants, animals, and fossils, over 400 of which were new to science. Discoveries of the fossil plant Glossopteris—also found in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and India—supported the ideas that the climate of Antarctica was formerly warm enough to support trees, and that Antarctica was once united to the other landmasses. Before the expedition, glaciers had been studied only in Europe. The meteorological data collected was the longest unbroken weather record in the early twentieth century, providing baselines for current assessments of climate change. In 1920, former Terra Nova'' geographer Frank Debenham and geologist Raymond Priestley founded the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, which houses the greatest library of polar research. ## See also - Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions - Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration - List of Antarctic expeditions

Rodrigues starling

Extinct species of bird that was endemic to Rodrigues

The Rodrigues starling (Necropsar rodericanus) is an extinct species of starling that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues. Its closest relatives were the Mauritius starling and the hoopoe starling from nearby islands; all three are extinct and appear to be of Southeast Asian origin. The bird was only reported by French sailor Julien Tafforet, who was marooned on the island from 1725 to 1726. Tafforet observed it on the offshore islet of Île Gombrani. Subfossil remains found on the mainland were described in 1879, and were suggested to belong to the bird mentioned by Tafforet. There was much confusion about the bird and its taxonomic relations throughout the 20th century. The Rodrigues starling was 25–30 centimetres (10–12 inches) long, and had a stout beak. It was described as having a white body, partially black wings and tail, and a yellow bill and legs. Little is known about its behaviour. Its diet included eggs and dead tortoises, which it processed with its strong bill. Predation by rats introduced to the area was probably responsible for the bird's extinction some time in the 18th century. It first became extinct on mainland Rodrigues, then on Île Gombrani, its last refuge. ## Taxonomy In 1725, the French sailor Julien Tafforet was marooned on the Mascarene island of Rodrigues for nine months, and his report of his time there was later published as Relation d'île Rodrigue. In the report, he described encounters with various indigenous species, including a white and black bird which fed on eggs and dead tortoises. He stated that it was confined to the offshore islet of Île Gombrani, which was then called au Mât. François Leguat, a Frenchman who was also marooned on Rodrigues from 1691 to 1693 and had written about several species there (his account was published in 1708), did not have a boat, and therefore could not explore the various islets as Tafforet did. No people who later traveled to the island mentioned the bird. In an article written in 1875, the British ornithologist Alfred Newton attempted to identify the bird from Tafforet's description, and hypothesised that it was related to the extinct hoopoe starling (Fregilupus varius), which formerly inhabited nearby Réunion. Subfossil bones of a starling-like bird were first discovered on Rodrigues by the police magistrate George Jenner In 1866 and 1871, and by the British naturalist Henry H. Slater in 1874. They were found in caves on the Plaine Coral, a limestone plain in south-west Rodrigues. These bones included the cranium, mandible, sternum, coracoid, humerus, metacarpus, ulna, femur, tibia, and metatarsus of several birds; the bones were deposited in the British Museum and the Cambridge Museum. In 1879, the bones became the basis of a scientific description of the bird by ornithologists Albert Günther and Edward Newton (the brother of Alfred). They named the bird Necropsar rodericanus; Nekros and psar are Greek for "dead" and "starling", while rodericanus refers to the island of Rodrigues. This binomial was originally proposed by Slater in an 1874 manuscript he sent to Günther and Newton. Slater had prepared the manuscript for an 1879 publication, which was never released, but Günther and Newton quoted Slater's unpublished notes in their own 1879 article, and credited him for the name. BirdLife International credits Slater rather than Günther and Newton for the name. Günther and Newton determined that the Rodrigues starling was closely related to the hoopoe starling, and they only kept it in a separate genus due to what they termed "present ornithological practice". Due to the strongly built bill, they considered the new species likely the same as the bird mentioned in Tafforet's account. In 1900, the English scientist George Ernest Shelley used the spelling Necrospa in a book, thereby creating a junior synonym; he attributed the name to zoologist Philip Sclater. In 1967, the American ornithologist James Greenway suggested that the Rodrigues starling should belong in the same genus as the hoopoe starling, Fregilupus, due to the similarity of the species. More subfossils found in 1974 added support to the claim that the Rodrigues bird was a distinct genus of starling. The stouter bill is mainly what warrants generic separation from Fregilupus. In 2014, the British palaeontologist Julian P. Hume described a new extinct species, the Mauritius starling (Cryptopsar ischyrhynchus), based on subfossils from Mauritius. It was shown to be closer to the Rodrigues starling than to the hoopoe starling, due to the features of its skull, sternum and humerus. Until then, the Rodrigues starling was the only Mascarene passerine bird named from fossil material. Hume noted that Günther and Newton had not designated a holotype specimen among the fossils they based the specific name on, and chose the skull from their syntype series of bones as the lectotype; specimen NMHUK A9050, housed at the Natural History Museum, London. Hume also identified other bones depicted by Günther and Newton among museum collections, and designated them as paralectotypes. ### Misidentifications In 1898, the British naturalist Henry Ogg Forbes described a second species of Necropsar, N. leguati, based on a skin in the World Museum Liverpool, specimen D.1792, which was labelled as coming from Madagascar. He suggested that this was the bird mentioned by Tafforet, instead of N. rodericanus from mainland Rodrigues. Walter Rothschild believed the Liverpool specimen to be an albinistic specimen of a Necropsar species supposedly from Mauritius. In 1953, Japanese writer Masauji Hachisuka suggested that N. leguati was distinct enough to warrant its own genus, Orphanopsar. In a 2005 DNA analysis, the specimen was eventually identified as an albinistic specimen of the grey trembler (Cinclocerthia gutturalis) from Martinique. Hachisuka believed the carnivorous habits described by Tafforet to be unlikely for a starling, and thought the lack of a crest suggested that it was not closely related to Fregilupus, and therefore concluded that the bones described by Günther and Newton did not belong to the bird mentioned by Tafforet. Hachisuka was reminded of corvids because of the black-and-white plumage, and assumed the bird seen by Tafforet was a sort of chough. In 1937, he named it Testudophaga bicolor, with Testudophaga meaning "tortoise eater", and coined the common name "bi-coloured chough". Hachisuka's assumptions are disregarded today, and modern ornithologists find Tafforet's bird to be identical to the one described from subfossil remains. In 1987, the British ornithologist Graham S. Cowles prepared a manuscript that described a new species of Old World babbler, Rodriguites microcarina, based on an incomplete sternum found in a cave on Rodrigues. In 1989, the name was mistakenly published before the description, making it a nomen nudum. Later examination of the sternum by Hume showed that Rodriguites microcarina was identical to the Rodrigues starling. ### Evolution In 1943, the American ornithologist Dean Amadon suggested that Sturnus-like species could have arrived in Africa, and given rise to the wattled starling (Creatophora cinerea) and the Mascarene starlings. According to Amadon, the Rodrigues and hoopoe starlings were related to Asiatic starlings, such as some species of Sturnus, rather than the glossy starlings (Lamprotornis) of Africa and the Madagascar starling (Saroglossa aurata); he concluded this based on the colouration of the birds. A 2008 study, which analysed the DNA of various starlings, confirmed that the hoopoe starling was a starling, but with no close relatives among the sampled species. Extant East Asian starlings, such as the Bali myna (Leucopsar rothschildi) and the white-headed starling (Sturnia erythropygia), have similarities with these extinct species in colouration and other features. As the Rodrigues and Mauritius starlings seem to be more closely related to each other than to the hoopoe starling, which appears to be closer to Southeast Asian starlings, there may have been two separate colonisations of starlings in the Mascarenes from Asia, with the hoopoe starling being the latest arrival. Apart from Madagascar, the Mascarenes were the only islands in the south-west Indian Ocean that contained native starlings. This is probably due to the isolation, varied topography and vegetation of these islands. ## Description The Rodrigues starling was large for a starling, being 25–30 cm (10–12 in) in length. Its body was white or greyish white, with blackish-brown wings, and a yellow bill and legs. Tafforet's complete description of the bird reads as follows: > A little bird is found which is not common, for it is not found on the mainland. One sees it on the islet au Mât [Ile Gombrani], which is to the south of the main island, and I believe it keeps to that islet on account of the birds of prey which are on the mainland, as also to feed with more facility on the eggs of the fishing birds which feed there, for they feed on nothing else but eggs or turtles dead of hunger, which they well know how to tear out of their shells. These birds are a little larger than a blackbird [Réunion bulbul (Hypsipetes borbonicus)], and have white plumage, part of the wings and tail black, the beak yellow as well as the feet, and make a wonderful warbling. I say a warbling, since they have many and altogether different notes. We brought up some with cooked meat, cut up very small, which they eat in preference to seed. Tafforet was familiar with the fauna of Réunion, where the related hoopoe starling lived. He made several comparisons between the faunas of different locations, so the fact that he did not mention a crest on the Rodrigues starling indicates that it was absent. His description of their colouration is similar. The skull of the Rodrigues starling was similar to and about the same size as that of the hoopoe starling, but the skeleton was smaller. Though the Rodrigues starling was clearly able to fly, its sternum was smaller compared to that of other starlings; it may not have required powerful flight, due to the small area and topography of Rodrigues. The two starlings differed mainly in details of the skull, jaws, and sternum. The maxilla of the Rodrigues starling was shorter, less curved, had a less slender tip, and had a stouter mandible. Not enough remains of the Rodrigues starling have been found to assess whether it was sexually dimorphic. Subfossils show a disparity in size between specimens, but this may be due to individual variation, as the differences are gradual, with no distinct size classes. There is a difference in bill length and shape between two Rodrigues starling specimens, which could indicate dimorphism. Compared to the other Mascarene starlings, the skull of the Rodrigues starling was relatively compressed from top to bottom, and it had a wide frontal bone. The skull was shaped somewhat differently and longer than that of the hoopoe starling, being about 29 mm (1.1 in) long from the occipital condyle; it was also narrower, being 21–22 mm (0.83–0.87 in) wide. The eyes were set slightly lower, and the upper rims of the eye sockets were about 8 mm (0.31 in) apart. The interorbital septum was more delicate, with a larger hole in its centre. The bill was about 36–39 mm (1.4–1.5 in) long, less curved and proportionally a little deeper than in the hoopoe starling. The rostrum (bony beak) of the upper jaw was long and relatively wide, and the premaxilla (the frontmost bone of the upper jaw) was robust and relatively straight. The bony nasal openings were large and oval, measuring 12–13 mm (0.47–0.51 in) in length. The rostrum of the lower mandible was wide and sharp, and relatively deep and robust at the back, with a robust retroarticular process (the hind part that connected with the skull) that was directed towards the midline. The mandible was about 52–60 mm (2.0–2.4 in) long and 4–5 mm (0.16–0.20 in) deep at the back. The supraoccipital ridge on the skull was quite strongly developed, and a biventer muscle attachment in the parietal region below it was conspicuous. This indicates that the starling had strong neck and jaw muscles. The coracoid of the Rodrigues starling was small, relatively gracile, and was otherwise identical to that of the hoopoe starling, measuring 27.5 mm (1.08 in). The keel of the sternum (breast-bone) was similar to that of the hoopoe starling, though the front part was 1 mm lower. The wing and leg bones did not differ much from those of the hoopoe starling and other starlings; the length of the forearm of the hoopoe starling was somewhat longer relatively to the humerus than that of the Rodrigues starling, while other measurements were roughly the same. The humerus was gracile and had a curved shaft, and measured 32–35 mm (1.3–1.4 in). The ulna was small, relatively gracile, and had distinct quill knobs (where the secondary remige feathers attached). The ulna was somewhat shorter than that of the hoopoe starling, measuring 37–40 mm (1.5–1.6 in). The carpometacarpus was small, and measured 22.5 mm (0.89 in). The femur (thigh-bone) was large and robust, particularly ant the upper and lower ends, and it shaft was straight and expanded at the upper end. The femur measured around 33 mm (1.3 in). The tibiotarsus (lower leg bone) was large, robust, with a broad and expanded shaft, and was 52–59 mm (2.0–2.3 in) long. The tarsometatarsus (ankle bone) was long, robust, with a relatively straight shaft, and measured 36–41 mm (1.4–1.6 in). ## Behaviour and ecology Little is known about the behaviour of the Rodrigues starling, apart from Tafforet's description, from which various inferences can be made. The robustness of its limbs and the strong jaws with the ability to gape indicates that it foraged on the ground. Its diet may have consisted of the various snails and invertebrates of Rodrigues, as well as scavenged items. Rodrigues had large colonies of seabirds and now-extinct Cylindraspis land tortoises, as well as marine turtles, which would have provided a large amount of food for the starling, particularly during the breeding seasons. Tafforet reported that the pigeons and parrots on the offshore southern islets only came to the mainland to drink water, and Leguat noted that the pigeons only bred on the islets due to persecution from rats on the mainland; the starling may have also done this. Originally, the Rodrigues starling may have been widely distributed on Rodrigues, with seasonal visits to the islets. Tafforet's description also indicates that it had a complex song. The stouter build and more bent shape of the mandible suggest that the Rodrigues starling used greater force than the hoopoe starling when searching and perhaps digging for food. It probably also had the ability to remove objects and forcefully open entrances when searching for food; it did this by inserting its wedge-shaped bill and opening its mandibles, as other starlings and crows do. This ability supports Tafforet's observation that the bird fed on eggs and dead tortoises. It could have torn dead, presumably juvenile, turtles and tortoises out of their shells. Tafforet did not see any Rodrigues starlings on the mainland, but he stated that they could easily be reared by feeding them meat, which indicates that he brought young birds from a breeding population on Île Gombrani. Tafforet was marooned on Rodrigues during the summer and was apparently able to procure juvenile individuals; some other Rodrigues birds are known to breed at this time, so it is likely that the starling did the same. Many other species endemic to Rodrigues became extinct after humans arrived, and the island's ecosystem is now heavily damaged. Before humans arrived, forests completely covered the island, but very little remains today. The Rodrigues starling lived alongside other recently extinct birds, such as the Rodrigues solitaire, the Rodrigues parrot, Newton's parakeet, the Rodrigues rail, the Rodrigues scops owl, the Rodrigues night heron, and the Rodrigues pigeon. Extinct reptiles include the domed Rodrigues giant tortoise, the saddle-backed Rodrigues giant tortoise, and the Rodrigues day gecko. ## Extinction Leguat mentioned that pigeons only bred on islets off Rodrigues, due to predation from rats on the mainland. This may be the reason why Tafforet only observed the Rodrigues starling on an islet. By Tafforet's visit in 1726, the bird must have either been absent or very rare on mainland Rodrigues. Rats - constituting an Invasive species - could have arrived in 1601, when a Dutch fleet surveyed Rodrigues. The islets would have been the last refuge for the bird, until the rats colonised them, too. The Rodrigues starling was extinct by the time French scientist Alexandre Guy Pingré visited Rodrigues during the French 1761 Transit of Venus expedition. The large populations of tortoises and marine turtles on Rodrigues resulted in the export of thousands of animals, and cats were introduced to control the rats, but the cats attacked the native birds and tortoises as well. The Rodrigues starling was already extinct on the mainland by this time. Rats are adept at crossing water, and inhabit almost all islets off Rodrigues today. At least five species of Aplonis starlings have become extinct in islands of the Pacific Ocean, and rats also contributed to their demise.

Nicholas Hoult

English actor (born 1989)

Nicholas Caradoc Hoult (born 7 December 1989) is an English actor. His filmography includes supporting work in big-budget mainstream productions and starring roles in independent projects in the American and British film industries. He has received several accolades, including nominations for a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. He was included in Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2012. Hoult performed in local theatre productions as a child. He made his screen debut in the 1996 film Intimate Relations after being cast at age five and later appeared in several television programmes between 1998 and 2001. His breakthrough came with his role in the 2002 comedy-drama About a Boy. He achieved wider recognition for his performance as Tony Stonem in the E4 teen series Skins (2007–2008). His transition to adult roles began with the 2009 drama A Single Man, for which he earned a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination, and the fantasy film Clash of the Titans (2010). He played the mutant Hank McCoy in the 2011 superhero film X-Men: First Class, a role he reprised in later instalments of the film series. Hoult played the titular Jack in the fantasy adventure film Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) and a zombie in the romantic comedy Warm Bodies (2013). He had a supporting role in the action film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and starred in a number of independent films before portraying various historical figures such as Robert Harley in the black comedy The Favourite (2018), writer J. R. R. Tolkien in Tolkien (2019), and Peter III in the Hulu comedy-drama series The Great (2020–2023). His work on the latter earned him nominations for two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award. He has since starred in the horror comedies The Menu (2022) and Renfield (2023). Outside of film, Hoult voiced Elliot in the 2010 action role-playing game Fable III and appeared in the 2009 West End play New Boy. He supports the charitable organisations Teenage Cancer Trust and Christian Aid. ## Early life Nicholas Caradoc Hoult was born on 7 December 1989 in Wokingham, Berkshire, to Glenis (née Brown), a piano teacher, and Roger Hoult, a commercial pilot. His middle name, Caradoc (pronounced /ka.ˈrɑː.dɔk/), is Welsh and translates to "The Beloved One". His paternal grand-aunt was Dame Anna Neagle, a stage and film actress active in the 1930s and 1940s. He has three siblings: an elder brother who is a United States–based biology student; and two sisters, both of whom are actresses. Hoult spent most of his childhood at his family's residence in Sindlesham, an estate village in the borough of Wokingham. His older siblings were interested in acting and dancing from an early age, taking classes and attending auditions. As a child, he began accompanying them and developed his own interest in acting. He discussed his childhood and his relationship with his siblings in a 2011 interview with The Guardian saying, "[we were] pretty outdoorsy normal kids running around in the garden and making tree houses ... it was very normal". During Hoult's childhood, his father was regularly working away from home and his brother was away attending school. As a result, he spent most of his time with his mother and sisters; he said being raised by women might have helped him "steer clear of some pitfalls that guys who didn't grow up with women would fall into". Hoult was educated at The Coombes Infant and Nursery School and then Arborfield Church of England Junior School. He practised ballet with his sisters and took part in productions of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker with the English National Ballet. Although he initially wanted to attain advanced level certificates in English, Biology, and Psychology, in 2002, aged 12, he decided instead to attend acting school at Sylvia Young Theatre School. At age 14, he left to attend the Church of England's secondary school Ranelagh School in Bracknell, Berkshire. Hoult played trombone as a child and was a member of the local choir. ## Career ### 1996–2005: Early career Hoult's acting potential was discovered at age three by a theatre director during a performance of a play that starred Hoult's brother. The director was impressed at Hoult's ability to "concentrate well" and offered him a role in his next theatre production The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Hoult began attending auditions and at age five was cast in the 1996 drama Intimate Relations, his first feature-film role. He later appeared in the television programmes Casualty, Silent Witness, The Bill, Judge John Deed, and Doctors, among others. Hoult initially treated acting as a hobby rather than a potential career option; in a March 2009 interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said he was not "in love with it ... I just enjoyed it. It was like playing for a football team. When you got a part it was great. And meeting new people. It was an exciting new world." Hoult's next feature-film appearance came at age eleven in Chris and Paul Weitz's 2002 comedy-drama film About a Boy. Hoult was initially reluctant to audition for the role as the casting process was a lengthy one and interfered with his schooling. He nonetheless decided to participate in the early rounds of auditions and was eventually cast in the role of Marcus, a "woolly-hatted, oddball son of a suicidal, hippy-ish single mother, [who] gets bullied horribly at school". About a Boy was a commercial success, grossing more than \$130 million worldwide and receiving praise by film critics. Hoult's portrayal of a lonely schoolboy was well-received; David Thomas, writing for The Daily Telegraph, attributed the film's appeal and success to Hoult's performance. By the time the film was released, Hoult had left his junior school in Arborfield and began attending Sylvia Young Theatre School in London. He said the change was difficult; his time there was short and he preferred attending a regular school. He still did not want to pursue acting as a profession and at 14 he left Sylvia Young Theatre School in favour of Ranelagh School. Hoult starred in Richard E. Grant's semi-autobiographical film Wah-Wah (2005) as Ralph Compton, a boy who is forced to deal with the disintegration of his family. The film, set in Swaziland during the 1960s, chronicles the waning years of the Swaziland Protectorate. Hoult made his debut in Hollywood with Gore Verbinski's film The Weather Man (2005) as the son of a television weather presenter undergoing a mid-life crisis. The film and Hoult's performance went largely unnoticed. Both Wah-Wah and The Weather Man performed poorly at the box office. ### 2006–2010: Skins and West End debut Hoult was a student at Sixth Form College Farnborough in 2006 when he was cast in the lead role of the television teenage-drama Skins. He was initially sceptical of his ability to play Tony Stonem, a manipulative, egocentric anti-hero, and identified more closely with the supporting character Sid. The programme was a success and ran for seven series, only two of which Hoult appeared in. His performance was well received; the character was popular, and Hoult garnered widespread attention. Skins won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Philip Audience Award, and Hoult was nominated for the Golden Nymph Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series. Critic Elliott David lauded Hoult for his performance in a 2016 retrospective review, and wrote that he "maintain[ed] the inexplicable core of his character throughout". During his time on Skins, Hoult felt overwhelmed by the attention he received and considered quitting acting altogether at one point. Instead, he left school at the end of Skins' first series and chose to focus solely on acting. Hoult briefly appeared as Stefan Fredman in the pilot episode of the British television series Wallander. He later made his West End theatre debut as Mark, the protagonist in William Sutcliffe's coming-of-age play New Boy; the production premiered at Trafalgar Studios and had record-breaking ticket sales, which was mostly attributed to Hoult's popularity among viewers of Skins. The play was staged for a week in March 2009 because Hoult had committed to a part in the fantasy-adventure film Clash of the Titans (2010), filming for which was scheduled for mid-2010. Hoult's performance as Mark, a "ferociously bright and articulate but sexually confused sixth-former" received mixed responses from critics. Dominic Cavendish of The Daily Telegraph wrote that his performance was persuasive, but Lyn Gardner of The Guardian found him average and highlighted his inability to bring out the "unresolved sexual tension beneath [the] banter". Clash of the Titans was panned by critics but was a success at the box office, grossing nearly \$500,000,000 worldwide. Hoult next appeared in Tom Ford's A Single Man (2009), after the actor originally cast in the role of Kenny Potter left the film a few days before filming commenced. Hoult had previously shown interest in the project and had sent a recorded audition tape; he was eventually chosen for the role of Kenny, a homosexual college student who helps a college professor deal with his grief. A Single Man was variously described by media outlets as the first adult role for Hoult, who described Kenny as a "spontaneous" character not simply defined by his sexuality. Because the role was his first as an American character, Hoult worked on his accent; Sukhdev Sandhu of The Daily Telegraph noted Ford's choice of casting British actors as Americans (Hoult and Matthew Goode) and vice versa (Julianne Moore). A Single Man opened to widespread acclaim despite reservations from critics about Ford's directorial abilities; it was a box-office success. The film earned Hoult a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award at the 2010 ceremony. In 2010, Hoult voiced the character of Elliot in Lionhead Studios' action role-playing game Fable III (2010). ### 2011–2016: Commercial success with X-Men and Mad Max Hoult was cast as Nux in George Miller's action film Mad Max: Fury Road; the project spent several years in development hell because plans for a fourth film in the Mad Max franchise encountered financial difficulties. Filming was planned for mid-2010, but heavy rain caused severe delays during pre-production in Australia. With no other immediate commitments, Hoult began to look for other prospects. He was eventually cast in the role of Hank McCoy / Beast for the X-Men film series owing to his ability to play somebody "gentle with a capability of being fierce". Before filming began on the 2011 Matthew Vaughn-directed instalment X-Men: First Class, a prequel to the franchise's earlier films, Hoult familiarised himself with his character; he said he "formulated [his] own version of the Beast" and took inspiration from Kelsey Grammer's performance in the previous X-Men: The Last Stand because he wanted to emulate Grammer's charm and eloquence. Hoult learned to speak in a dialect similar to Grammer's without trying to imitate it. He also underwent physical training and gained weight to better suit his character. The film, which was widely praised by critics for its script and performances, performed moderately well at the box office, collecting about \$353 million against a production budget of \$160 million. Although it was the lowest-ranked production in the entire series in terms of revenue, Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox deemed it "an excellent start to a new chapter of the franchise". Mad Max: Fury Road was eventually filmed in 2012 in the Namibian desert. Miller had conceived Nux, a terminally ill slave, as a "quasi kamikaze pilot"; Hoult said of his character; "he's very enthusiastic and committed and affectionate but also kind of clumsy". Hoult shaved his head and followed a strict diet because his role required him to lose a lot of weight. He also talked about performing stunts in the film, describing the entire experience as "scary", but favourably compared the stunt crew and Miller's choice to incorporate real action sequences instead of using a green screen, saying it made the performance more believable because the actors are placed in a real situation. Fury Road opened to critical acclaim on 14 May 2015 and grossed more than \$378 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the Mad Max franchise. The technical aspects and stunt sequences drew particular praise from film critics and it was credited for reviving interest in the series. Shalini Langer noted that while the real hero of the film was Charlize Theron, "[Hoult] is the closest in the acting department ... as Joe's 'war boy' chasing imagined glory". Hoult's "fabulously unhinged" performance was also praised by Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph. Also in 2012, Hoult was included in the Forbes 30 under 30 list. In 2013, Hoult had starring roles in two major films; he first played a zombie named R in Jonathan Levine's romantic comedy Warm Bodies, which was released on 1 February. An adaptation of Isaac Marion's novel of the same name, the film is presented from point of view of the central character, mostly through narration. Levine said he had difficulties finding a suitable actor to play R until he met Hoult, who was attracted to the project—which he described as "much more than a horror movie" owing to the use of multiple pop culture and literary allusions—and even more so to the role which "bowled [me] over". Hoult said he drew inspiration from Edward Scissorhands (1990) because he thought the central characters in both films share the same difficulties. To prepare for the role of a zombie, Hoult and the other actors practised with Cirque du Soleil performers; he said of the experience; "we would take our shoes off in a dance studio ... kind of grow out of the wall and make our bodies feel very heavy". The film garnered positive response from critics and audiences. Ben Kendrick praised Hoult for the restraint in a potentially Razzie-worthy role: "[he] brings a lot of life to R without stepping too far in the other direction [and although his] zombie mannerisms may come across a bit forced but, overall, his memorable moments outnumber (and outweigh) the awkward ones." Hoult was also described as "an extremely appealing actor, [who] is charm personified" in his role of the living-dead. Hoult's next film, Bryan Singer's 2013 fantasy adventure Jack the Giant Slayer, failed at the box office and received mixed response from critics. He played the eponymous hero in the film, which is based on the British fairy tales "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Jack and the Beanstalk". Hoult's performance was poorly received by film critics Mary Pols, Justin Chang and Richard Roeper; Pols was critical of his "disconcerting" imitation of Hugh Grant and the other two dismissed him and his character as "bland" and "boring", respectively. Hoult then appeared in Jake Paltrow's science-fiction film Young Ones (2014). Set in a dystopian future where water is scarce, the film had Hoult play Flem Lever, a young man who is trying to claim the land owned by the film's central character Ernest Holm. Hoult thought the role was unlike any of his previous work and said his character's questionable choices throughout the film intrigued him. Hoult read novels written by S. E. Hinton to prepare for the role. The film was shot in a deserted location in South Africa; Hoult said filming in the hot weather conditions was difficult but the "beautiful" scenery helped to tell the story better. He said it also made him more conscious of environmental concerns. The film premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was met with mixed responses. Commentators highlighted the film's standout scenery but were critical of its plot. Keith Uhlich of The A.V. Club said Hoult was a poor fit for the story's "stoically retrograde machismo". Hoult reprised his role as Beast in Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past, his other release of 2014. Hoult said playing the character was a freeing experience for him and that it was "fun to suddenly be able to break loose ... when you're wearing the makeup ... you can perform big ... you get to have two very different techniques, performances." He also said the lengthy make-up procedure could last up to three and a half hours. X-Men: Days of Future Past earned more than \$747 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film in the series and in Hoult's career at that time. In 2015, Hoult had three other releasesthe feature film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's mystery novel Dark Places; Owen Harris' dark comedy Kill Your Friends, based on the 2008 novel of the same name; and Equals, a dystopian, science-fiction romantic drama directed by Drake Doremusall of which were critical failures and rank among the lowest-grossing films of his career. Response to Hoult's performance in Equals was relatively better; Peter Travers called him and his co-star Kristen Stewart "quietly devastating", and Katie Walsh, writing for Los Angeles Times, said the duo were "finely matched both in their androgynous beauty and in their performances of a repressed humanity". Despite doubts about his contract with the franchise, Hoult returned for the 2016 film X-Men: Apocalypse. Upon release, the film became the third-ranked X-Men film in terms of worldwide box office collections, earning about \$540 million. It was also a top-grossing production outside the United States. ### 2017–2019: Biographical and independent films The action film Collide, which had Hoult star as a drug dealer, was released in the United States in February 2017 to a poor response from audiences and critics. The film garnered negative reviews; its dismal box office performance was attributed to poor marketing and multiple delays caused by the 2015 chapter 11 bankruptcy of its production company Relativity Media. Forbes' Scott Mendelson analysed the film's failure and said Hoult did not necessarily have enough "star power" to draw audiences. He highlighted the misogyny and sense of entitlement in the entertainment industry, writing that director Eran Creevy and Hoult would get better offers despite the failure of films like Collide, as opposed to the women and other minority groups, who are either ignored or stereotyped. Responses to Hoult's next film, the romance drama Newness, were more enthusiastic. The production had its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; it stars Hoult as one half of a Los Angeles-based couple who meet through online dating and begin an open relationship. Drake Doremus, the film's director, said Hoult's role was unlike his previous work; "a very complex and emotionally mature performance that we haven't seen yet". Hoult starred in a series of biographical and historical films in 2017; he said he preferred playing characters that might help him improve as an actor and that the "actors I look up to started doing their best work in their early 30s and I'll be hitting that age ... I'm just trying to learn". He portrayed American author J. D. Salinger in Danny Strong's Rebel in the Rye, which chronicles Salinger's life from his youth to the World War II era and the years preceding the publication of his debut novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Hoult auditioned for the role because he was intrigued by the film's script and Salinger's enigmatic personality; "I didn't know he fought in the second world war and landed on D-Day: ... had intermittent PTSD or that he became interested in Vedanta philosophy and meditated and did yoga." To prepare for the role, Hoult read The Catcher in the Rye and biographies about Salinger. Hoult said the biggest challenge was to get a real understanding of Salinger's character; "everyone has an idea of [Salinger] in their mind ... you're creating a character that people have very strong feelings about. You can't prove to be right or wrong through impressions." Rebel in the Rye opened to a poor response from film critics. Carson Lund of Slant was largely unimpressed by Hoult's "feeble" performance and his inability to "reinvest the character with the complexities lost in the story's programmatic telling". RogerEbert.com's Matt Fagerholm wrote that although Hoult was capable of illuminating the insecurities and fixations of his character, he is never "quite believable as Salinger". Fagerholm ascribed the failure to the script, which left the character's key motivations "frustratingly muddled". Hoult co-starred in The Current War, a dramatisation of the feud between electrical pioneers Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Hoult was cast in the role of Nikola Tesla, for which he grew a moustache and attended science lessons about electromagnetism and dynamos. He lost weight for his role by following a strict diet. Response to The Current War was mixed; David Ehrlich of IndieWire described Hoult's performance as a tribute to David Bowie, who had previously played Tesla in The Prestige (2006). In a departure from biographical dramas, Hoult next starred as an American soldier in Sand Castle, a production he described as a very different war film "in terms of the pacing and the emotion ... very under the surface, that futility-of-war idea". He recalled the filming experience in the Jordanian military bases practising clearing procedures: "we put on these masks, get given these guns, are put inside this pitch-black house ... try and hunt down these bad guys hiding inside. You're in all the gear ... the adrenaline starts pumping." Released on Netflix in 2017, the film garnered mixed reviews. In The Favourite (2018), a critically acclaimed period drama about Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Hoult played the supporting role of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer. He next voiced Fiver in the animated television miniseries adaptation of Richard Adams' 1972 novel Watership Down. In 2019, Hoult portrayed author J. R. R. Tolkien in the biopic Tolkien. He next reprised his role as Hank McCoy in the X-Men film Dark Phoenix. Both Tolkien and Dark Phoenix were poorly received. ### 2020–present: The Great and beyond The following year, Hoult began starring as Peter III of Russia in the Hulu comedy-drama series The Great. The series and his performance received critical acclaim. He was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. In 2021, Hoult appeared in a villainous role in the thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. Hoult starred in the black comedy film The Menu, alongside Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, in 2022. It received positive reviews. Hoult next played the titular role in the comedy-horror film Renfield. In June 2023, he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the actors branch. In 2024, he will have a voice role in the animated film Garfield. Hoult will also star in Nosferatu, written and directed by Robert Eggers. In mid-2023, Hoult will shoot lead roles in The Order, directed by Justin Kurzel, and Juror \#2, directed by Clint Eastwood. He is also attached to produce and star in The One. ## Personal life and other work Hoult splits his time between London and Los Angeles. He is in a relationship with American model Bryana Holly. The couple have two children together. During his childhood, Hoult played basketball for the Reading-based team Reading Rockets, which played in the English Basketball League. He was later appointed as the club's ambassador. He also follows Formula One racing and has attended several Grand Prix events at Montreal, Singapore and Germany. ### Philanthropy Hoult is a philanthropist and supports numerous charities; he has been associated with organisations that support children. He was appointed the first National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) Young Person Ambassador, for supporting the charity's activities aimed at children and young people. Since 2009, he has also been involved with the Teenage Cancer Trust; he continues to visit patients supported by the organisation and has helped promote its awareness campaigns, including the sun-safety campaign "Shunburn". Hoult designed sweaters for Save the Children's and Selfish Mother's joint Christmas Jumper Day campaign. He encouraged customers to buy the festive collection and support the charitable cause, which he thought would bring a "real change to children's lives". He also donated a pair of shoes, which was auctioned by Small Steps Project, an organisation that helps homeless and malnourished children. Hoult was inducted into the NSPCC Hall of Fame in 2010 for his contributions to the campaign against child cruelty. Hoult visited Nairobi, Kenya, as a part of a Christian Aid project aimed at providing clean water and sanitation. During his stay he met local people and helped clean the locality. He said of his experience; "I met great people making the best of the situation ... it is heart-breaking in many ways to see the living conditions". Hoult also participated in the Rickshaw Run in January 2017, in which participants drove an auto rickshaw (also called a tuk tuk) for 3,000 kilometres (1,900 mi) across India to raise funds for Teenage Cancer Trust and World Wide Fund for Nature. He has also been associated with Jeans for Refugees, a project and fundraising initiative intended to help refugees around the world. He donated a signed pair of jeans to the organisation; profits from the campaign were donated to the refugee support agency International Rescue Committee. ## Filmography and awards For his role in About a Boy (2002), Hoult won the Best Youth Performance at the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards and earned a nomination for Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer. He was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award for his role in A Single Man at the 2010 British Academy Film Awards. For his performance in The Great, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.

Persona (series)

Japanese media franchise

Persona, previously marketed as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona outside of Japan, is a video game franchise primarily developed and published by Atlus, and owned by Sega. Focusing around a series of role-playing video games, Persona is a spin-off from Atlus' Megami Tensei franchise. The first entry in the series, Revelations: Persona, was released in 1996 for the PlayStation. The series has seen several more games since, with the most recent main entry being 2019's Persona 5 Royal with an upcoming game Persona 3:Reload, a remake of the 2006 game, Persona 3. Persona began as a spin-off based on the positively-received high school setting of Shin Megami Tensei If... (1994). Persona's core features include a group of students as the main cast, a silent protagonist similar to the mainline Megami Tensei franchise, and combat using Personas. Since the release of Persona 3 in 2006, the main series has used a social simulation function called Social Links, which are directly linked to how Personas evolve. Character designs are by series co-creator Kazuma Kaneko (Persona and the Persona 2 duology) and Shigenori Soejima (Persona 3 onwards). Its overall theme is exploration of the human psyche and how the characters find their true selves. The series' recurring concepts and design elements draw on Jungian psychology, psychological personas and tarot cards, along with religion, mythology, and literature themes and influences. Revelations: Persona was the first role-playing Megami Tensei game to be released outside of Japan. Beginning with Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, the English localizations began to remain faithful to the Japanese versions at the insistence of Atlus. The series is highly popular internationally, becoming the best-known Megami Tensei spin-off and establishing Atlus and the Megami Tensei franchise in North America. Following the release of Persona 3 and 4, the series also established a strong following in Europe. The series has since gone on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide, outselling its parent franchise. There have been numerous adaptations, including anime series, films, novelizations, mangas, stage plays, radio dramas, and musical concerts. ## Games ### Main series - Revelations: Persona is the first entry in the series, and was released in Japan and North America for the PlayStation in 1996. A port to Windows was released in Japan in 1999. The game was later ported to the PlayStation Portable (PSP): it was published in 2009 in Japan and North America as physical and digital releases, and 2010 in Europe as a digital release. Set in the town of Mikage-cho, it follows a group of high school students from St. Hermelin High, who are forced to confront an outbreak of demons in their hometown. - Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the second entry in the series, released in Japan for the PlayStation in 1999. After the success of Persona's PSP port, a port of Innocent Sin was greenlit. For this version, adjustments were made so that it played more like its sequel, along with added features and a new scenario. The port was released in 2011 in all regions. Set in the coastal city of Sumaru, the story follows Tatsuya Suou, a student of Seven Sisters High, as he confronts phenomena generated by reality-altering rumors. - Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is the third entry in the main series, released in Japan and North America for the PlayStation in 2000. Like Innocent Sin, it was remade for PSP, and included a new scenario by the game's original writer. The remake released in Japan in 2012, but did not reach the West. The original version was re-released worldwide on PlayStation Network (PSN) in 2013 in response to this. Set shortly after the ending of Innocent Sin, the story follows Maya Amano, a supporting character from the previous game, as she confronts a similar rumor-created threat along with Tatsuya. - Persona 3 is the fourth entry in the main series. Developed for PlayStation 2, it released in 2006 in Japan, 2007 in North America, and 2008 in Europe. Persona 3 FES, a director's cut featuring new content and an epilogue, was released in 2007 in Japan and 2008 in North America and Europe. The main portion of FES was later ported to the PSP in Japan in 2009, North America in 2010, and in Europe in 2011 as Persona 3 Portable: it featured a few enhancements such as a female playable character and the ability to control all characters in battle, and some content was adjusted or removed so it could fit on a portable platform. Ports of Persona 3 Portable were released on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on January 19, 2023. A remake of Persona 3, Persona 3 Reload, is planned for release in early 2024. The story takes place in the city of Tatsumi Port Island, following a group of students known as "S.E.E.S." who fight monsters that appear during a time known as the Dark Hour. - Persona 4 is the fifth entry in the main series, released for the PlayStation 2 in 2008 in Japan and North America, and 2009 in Europe. The success of Persona 3 Portable inspired the creation of a portable version of Persona 4, titled Persona 4 Golden. As using the PSP would result in cutting too much content, it was instead developed for PlayStation Vita, which allowed for the addition of new features and content. A port of Golden was released for Windows in 2020, with ports for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S released on January 19, 2023. Persona 4 takes place in the rural town of Inaba, where a group of students investigate a series of killings related to a realm known as the Midnight Channel. - Persona 5 is the sixth entry in the main series, released for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It is set in Tokyo and follows a group of students as they adopt disguises of thieves to tackle the city's corruption and attain freedom from imposed societal pressures. Persona 5 was released in Japan in September 2016, and in North America and Europe in April 2017. Persona 5 Royal, an enhanced version of the game similar to Persona 4 Golden, was released for PlayStation 4 in Japan in 2019 and worldwide the following year. Ports of Royal for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S were released in October 2022. ### Spin-offs Persona 3 received a Japan-exclusive spin-off titled it follows a similar cycle of daytime activities and night time combat as the original game, with one player being chosen as the party leader each night. After its closure in 2008, a new free-to-play browser game titled was released that year; the gameplay focused on players fusing Personas and confronting a threat known as the Qliphoth. Staying exclusive to Japan, it closed down in June 2010. A fighting game sequel to Persona 4, Persona 4 Arena, was released in arcades in Japan in 2012. Console versions were released in 2012 in Japan and North America, and 2013 in Europe. A sequel, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, was similarly released in Japanese arcades in 2013, then released in 2014 in all regions for consoles. A standalone spin-off for the Nintendo 3DS, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, was released worldwide in 2014; it features the full casts of Persona 3 and 4, and is classed by Atlus as an official entry in the Persona canon. A sequel, Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, saw the addition of the Persona 5 characters and was released in Japan in 2018 and worldwide in 2019. A rhythm game set after the events of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Persona 4: Dancing All Night, was released worldwide in 2015. Two follow-ups to Dancing All Night, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, were released together in 2018. A Dynasty Warriors-style action role-playing sequel to Persona 5, Persona 5 Strikers, was released in Japan in 2020 and worldwide the following year. A tactics spin-off of Persona 5, Persona 5 Tactica, is scheduled for release in November 2023. Several Persona mobile games have been made in partnership with other Japanese mobile companies such as BBMF. Their first partnership was in 2006 with the development and release of a 3D dungeon crawler set within the environments of the first Persona game. The companies later collaborated on two mobile games based on the Persona 2 games: in 2007, and in 2009. Both games carried over the basic gameplay functions of the original games tailored for mobile phones. Many mobile spin-offs are related to Persona 3: there is an RPG side-story titled an action game prequel set ten years prior to Persona 3 titled and an alternate version of Persona 3 featuring different characters titled Multiple Persona 3-themed puzzle games have also been developed. An online mobile RPG set around the high school featured in Persona 3, titled was released in 2009. Persona 4 likewise received a mobile card game spin-off, titled A mobile spin-off for Persona 5 entitled Persona 5: The Phantom X was announced in 2023, developed by Black Wings Game Studio and published by Perfect World Games. ## Common elements ### Gameplay The gameplay of the Persona series revolves around combat against various enemy types: Demons, Shadows and Personas. Main combat takes place during dungeon crawling segments within various locations. The way battles initiate varies between random encounters (Persona, Persona 2) or running into models representing enemy groups (Persona 3 onwards). Battles are governed by a turn-based system, where the player party and enemies each attack the opposing side. Actions in battle include standard physical attacks using short-range melee or long-range projectile weapons, magical attacks, using items, guarding, and under certain conditions escaping from battles. During battle, either side can strike an enemy's weakness, which deals more damage than other attacks. Starting with Persona 3, landing a critical hit grants the character an extra turn. If all enemies are knocked down by critical hits, the party can perform an "All Out Attack", with all party members attacking at once and dealing high damage. Each party member is manually controlled by the player in all but one Persona title: in Persona 3, all the party apart from the main character are controlled by an AI-based command system. The general gameplay has remained consistent across all Persona games. Each Persona game also includes unique elements. In Persona, battles take place on a grid-based battlefield, with characters' and enemies' movements dictated by their placement on the battlefield. This system was abandoned for the Persona 2 games: the party has free movement across the battlefield, and is assigned a set of moves which can be changed in the menu during and in between battles. In Persona and Persona 3, there is a lunar phase tied to gameplay, time progression, and the plot. In Persona 4, this was changed to a weather-based system, where changes in the weather keyed to the story affected enemy behavior. Persona 5 introduces elements such as platforming and stealth gameplay to dungeon exploration. The All-Out Attack can be initiated in a "Hold-Up" session, triggered when all enemies are knocked down. #### Personas A defining aspect of the series is the use of the "Persona", which are physical manifestations of a person's psyche and subconscious used for combat. The main Personas for the cast used up to Persona 3 were inspired by Graeco-Roman mythology. Persona 4's were based on Japanese deities; while Persona 5 used characters inspired by fictional and historical outlaws and thieves. The summoning ritual for Personas in battle varies throughout the series: in early games, the party gains the ability to summon through a short ritual after playing a parlor game; in Persona 3, they fire a gun-like device called an Evoker at their head to overcome their cowardice; in Persona 4, they summon their Personas by destroying Tarot cards; in Persona 5, they are summoned through the removal of the characters' masks. Personas are used for types of physical attack and magical attacks, along with actions such as healing and curing or inflicting status effects. For all Persona games, all playable characters start out with an initial Persona, which can evolve into other Personas through story-based events and use during battle. In multiple Persona games, two or more Personas can be summoned at once to perform a powerful Fusion Spell. In Persona 3, 4 and 5, only the main character can wield and change between multiple Personas; the other characters use a single Persona. During the course of the game, the player acquires more Personas through a system of Skill Cards, represented by Major Arcana Tarot cards. Each skill card represents a different Persona family, which in turn hold their own abilities inherent to that family. Multiple Personas can be fused together to create a new Persona with improved and inherited abilities: these range from fusing two Personas in the Persona 2 duology to up to twelve in Persona 4. Starting with Persona 3, the main protagonist of each game has an ability known as "Wild Card", an ability to summon multiple Personas represented by the Fool Arcana. #### Social Links and Negotiation "Social Links" is a system introduced in Persona 3 that is a form of character interaction tied to the growth of Personas. During their time outside battle, the main character can interact with and grow a particular Social Link, which acts as an independent character growth system tied to a Persona family or Arcanum. As the main character's relationship with the character representing a Social Link grows, its rank is raised and more powerful Personas related to the Social Link's assigned Arcanum can be summoned and fused. Attributes related to the main character's social life can also be used to improve their Persona abilities, such as their academic abilities and social aptitude. An enhanced version of the Social Link system, known as "Confidants", appeared in Persona 5. In Persona, the Persona 2 duology, and Persona 5, there is also a "Negotiation" mechanic carried over from the Megami Tensei series, in which player characters can talk with enemies and provoke certain actions depending on their dialogue choices. Some responses yield Skill Cards for use in creating new Personas. Negotiation was removed from Persona 3 and Persona 4, although Atlus staff considered the Social Link system and aspects of Persona fusion to be a "disguised" version of it. In Persona 5, they can be initiated during a "Hold Up" session; Shadows can be persuaded to join the party as a new Persona if the Negotiation is successful, the player does not already have them, and is at an appropriate experience level. ### Setting and themes The Persona series takes place in modern-day Japan and focuses on a group of high school students, with the exception to this being Eternal Punishment, which focused on a group of adults. The setting has been described as urban fantasy, with extraordinary events happening in otherwise normal locations. The typical setting used is a city, with a noted exception being the rural town setting of Persona 4. Although they are typically stand-alone games that only share thematic elements, the Persona games share a continuity, with elements from previous games turning up in later ones. Persona and the Persona 2 games shared narrative elements which were concluded with Eternal Punishment, so Persona 3 started out with a fresh setting and characters. The first in the series is Persona, set in the year 1996. This is followed by the events of Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment in 1999. At the end of Innocent Sin, the main characters rewrite events to avert the destruction of Earth, creating the Eternal Punishment reality, with the original reality becoming an isolated Other Side. Persona 3 and subsequent games stem from Eternal Punishment. Persona 3 is set from 2009 to 2010, and Persona 4 is set from 2011 to 2012. The Persona 4 Arena games and Dancing All Night take place in the months following Persona 4. In contrast, Persona 5 is set in a non-specific year referred to as "20XX", while Strikers is set several months after the events of Persona 5. The Persona Q series takes place in a separate enclosed world in which the characters of Persona 3, 4, and 5 are drawn into from their respective time periods. Dialogue in Q2 also suggests that Persona 5 takes place only a few years after 4. A central concept for the series is the collective unconscious, a place generated by the hearts of humanity and from which Personas are born. According to the official Persona Club P3 book, the collective unconscious was generated by the primitive life on Earth as a means of containing the spiritual essence of Nyx, a space-born being whose presence would cause the death of all life on Earth. Her body was damaged by the impact and became the moon, while her psyche was left on the surface and locked away at the heart of the collective unconscious. The fragments of Nyx's psyche, known as "Shadows", are both a threat and a crucial part of humanity's existence. To further help defend against hostile Shadows, people generated the deities that exist within the collective unconscious, many of which manifest as Personas. Nyx appears in Persona 3 as the antagonist. The major dungeon locations in each game are generated by the latent wishes and desires of humans and are generally used by another force for their own ends. A recurring location appearing in most of the games is the "Velvet Room", a place between reality and unconsciousness created by Philemon that changes form depending on the psyche of its current guest. Its inhabitants, led by an enigmatic old man called Igor, aid the main characters by helping them hone their Persona abilities. While normally inaccessible and invisible to all except those who forged a contract with the room, others can be summoned alongside the guest, intentionally or otherwise. The main character of each Persona game is a silent protagonist representing the player, with a manner described by the series' director as "silent and cool". When the writer for new story content in Eternal Punishment's PSP version wished for the main character to have spoken dialogue, this was vetoed as it went against the series tradition. Two recurring characters generated by the collective unconscious are Philemon and Nyarlathotep, the respective representatives of the positive and negative traits of humanity. In Innocent Sin, the two reveal that they are engaged in a proxy contest as to whether humanity can embrace its contradictory feelings and find a higher purpose before destroying itself. Philemon makes appearances in later Persona games as a blue butterfly. Many of the major antagonists in the series are personifications of death generated by the human subconscious. The central theme of the Persona series is exploration of the human psyche and the main characters discovering their true selves. The stories generally focus on the main cast's interpersonal relationships and psychologies. There is also an underlying focus on "the human soul". Many of the concepts and characters within the series (Personas, Shadows, Philemon) use Jungian psychology and archetypes. A recurring motif are the "masks" people wear during everyday life, which ties back to their Personas. This motif was more overtly expressed in Persona 5 through the main casts' use of masks in their thief guises. The dual lives of the main casts are directly inspired by these themes. Each game also includes specific themes and motifs. Persona 2 focuses on the effect of rumors on the fabric of reality (referred to by the developers as "the power of Kotodama"); Persona 3 employs themes involving depression and the darkness within people; Persona 4 focuses on how gossip and the media influences people's views of others; and Persona 5 shows how the main characters pursue personal freedom in a restrictive modern society. A recurring element in the earlier entries is "The Butterfly Dream", a famous story by the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou. It ties in with the series' themes, and also with Philemon's frequent appearances as a butterfly. Philemon's original appearance was based on Zhuang Zhou. The character Nyarlathotep is based on the character of the same name from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and the Mythos as a whole is frequently referenced in Persona 2. The Velvet Room was based on the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, while Igor and his assistants are all named after characters from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and its adaptations. ## Development The Persona series was first conceived after the release of Shin Megami Tensei If... for the Super Famicom. As the high school setting of If... had been positively received, Atlus decided to create a dedicated subseries focusing on the inner struggles of young adults. The focus on high school life was also decided upon due to the experiences of the series' creators, Kouji Okada and Kazuma Kaneko: according to them, as nearly everyone experiences being a student at some point in their lives, it was something everyone could relate to, representing a time of both learning and personal freedom. In their view, this approach helped players accept the series' themes and the variety of ideas included in each title. Kaneko in particular tried to recreate his experiences and the impact it had on him during his time with the series. The main concept behind the first game was a Megami Tensei title that was more approachable for new and casual players than the main series. The abundance of casual games on the PlayStation reinforced this decision. The game's title, represented the game's status as a direct spin-off from the series. It was later dropped to further define Persona as a standalone series. After the success of Persona, Innocent Sin began development, retaining many of the original staff. During the writing of Innocent Sin, it was decided that the world of Persona 2 needed a different perspective than that of the current protagonist. This decision laid the groundwork for Eternal Punishment. Following this, the Persona series entered a hiatus while focus turned to other projects, including Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. The conceptual Persona 3 was submitted to Atlus in 2003 by Katsura Hashino, who had worked as a designer for multiple Megami Tensei games and had been the director for Nocturne. Gaining Atlus' approval of the concept, development started in the same year, after the completion of Nocturne and the Digital Devil Saga duology. Persona 3 was part of Atlus' push to expand their player base outside of Japan. Ideas were being passed around about Persona 4, but the game did not begin official development until after the release of Persona 3. Preparations for Persona 5's development began in 2010. The team decided to shift towards more challenging story themes, saying that the shift would be more drastic than that experienced with Persona 3. Persona 4 Arena and its sequel were the first non-RPG collaborative project in the series: its success inspired the creation of both Persona Q and Dancing All Night. The first three Persona games were developed by Atlus' internal R&D1 studio, the studio responsible for the mainline Megami Tensei games. Beginning with Persona 3, a dedicated team originally referred to as the 2nd Creative Production Department began handling development for the series. The team was later renamed P-Studio in 2012. Hashino remained in charge of the studio until the Japanese release of Persona 5 in 2016, when he moved to found a new department, Studio Zero, to work on non-Persona projects. Aside from Atlus, other developers have helped develop entries in the Persona series. During the pre-production stage of Persona 4 Arena, Hashino approached Arc System Works after being impressed by their work on the BlazBlue series. For Dancing All Night, development was initially handled by Dingo, but due to quality concerns Atlus took over primary development with Dingo being retained as a supporting developer. ### Art design The two character artists for the Persona series are Kazuma Kaneko, a central artist in the main Megami Tensei series who designed characters for the first three Persona games, and Shigenori Soejima, who worked in a secondary capacity alongside Kaneko and took Kaneko's place as the character designer from Persona 3 onwards. While designing the characters for Persona, Kaneko was inspired by multiple notable celebrities and fictional characters of the time, along with members of Atlus staff. In Persona and Innocent Sin, the main characters all wore the same school uniforms, so Kaneko differentiated them using accessories. For Eternal Punishment, the main cast were adults, so Kaneko needed to rethink his design procedure. Eventually, he adopted the concept of ordinary adults, and gave them designs that would stand out in-game. Soejima's first major work for the series was working on side characters for Persona 2 alongside Kaneko. Kaneko put Soejima in charge of the series' art direction after Persona 2 as Kaneko did not want to imprint his drawing style on the Persona series, and also wanted Soejima to gain experience. Soejima felt a degree of pressure when he was given his new role, as the series had accumulated a substantial following during Kaneko's tenure. In a later interview, Soejima said that although he respected and admired Kaneko, he never consciously imitated the latter's work, and eventually settled into the role of pleasing the fans of the Persona series, approaching character designs with the idea of creating something new rather than referring back to Kaneko's work. For his character designs, Soejima uses real people he has met or seen, looking at what their appearance says about their personality. If his designs come too close to the people he has seen, he does a rough sketch while keeping the personality of the person in mind. For his work on Persona Q, his first time working with a deformed Chibi style due to its links with the Etrian Odyssey series, Soejima took into account what fans felt about the characters. A crucial part of his design technique was looking at what made a character stand out, then adjusting those features so they remained recognizable even with the redesign. Starting with Persona 3, each Persona game has been defined by a different aesthetic and key color. It is one of the first artistic decisions made by the team: Persona 3 has a dark atmosphere and serious characters, so the primary color was chosen as blue to reflect these and the urban setting. In contrast, Persona 4 has a lighter tone and characters but also sports a murder-mystery plot, so the color yellow was chosen to represent both the lighter tones and to evoke a "warning" signal. According to Soejima, blue was the "color of adolescence", and yellow was the "color of happiness". For Persona 5, the color chosen was red, to convey a harsh feeling in contrast to the previous Persona games and tie in with the game's story themes. Its art style was described as a natural evolution from where Persona 4 left off. ### Music The music of the Persona series has been handled by multiple composers. The one most associated with the series is Shoji Meguro, who began working on Persona shortly after he joined Atlus in 1995. His very first composition for the game was "Aria of the Soul", the theme for the velvet room that became a recurring track throughout the series. During his initial work on the series, Meguro felt restricted by the limited storage space of the PlayStation's disc system, and so when he began composing for Persona 3, which allowed for sound streaming due to increased hardware capacity, he was able to fully express his musical style. His main worry for his music in Persona 3 and 4 was the singers' pronunciation of the English lyrics. He was unable to work on the Persona 2 games as he was tied up with other projects, including Maken X. Meguro also served as the lead composer in Persona 5, using elements of acid jazz and the game's themes for inspiration to achieve the right mood. The music for Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment was handled by Toshiko Tasaki, Kenichi Tsuchiya, and Masaki Kurokawa. Tsuchiya had originally done minor work on Persona, and found composing for the games a strenuous experience. Spin-offs, such as the Persona Q and Dancing subseries, are usually handled by other Atlus composers such as Atsushi Kitajoh, Toshiki Konishi, and Ryota Kozuka. ## Release The series consists of thirteen games, not counting re-releases and mobile games. Persona was the first role-playing entry in the Megami Tensei franchise to be released outside of Japan, as previous entries had been considered ineligible due to possibly controversial content. As examples of this content were in a milder form for Persona, the restrictions did not apply. According to Atlus, Persona and its sequel were to test player reactions to the Megami Tensei series outside of Japan. The greater majority of Persona games were either first released on or exclusive to PlayStation platforms. This trend was broken with the release of Persona Q for the 3DS in 2014. All the Persona games have been published by Atlus in Japan and North America. An exception in Japan was the Windows port of Persona, which was published by ASCII Corporation. After 2016, due to Atlus USA's merger with Sega of America, Sega took over North American publishing duties, although the Atlus brand remained intact. Since then, Atlus has been releasing ports of the main Persona games for non-PlayStation platforms, beginning with the release of Persona 4 Golden on Windows in 2020, which marked the first time a numbered entry in the series released for PC worldwide. Sega would also assist Atlus in porting Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Portable to Windows, in addition to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S throughout 2022 and 2023. Due to the company not having a European branch, Atlus has generally given publishing duties to other third-party publishers with branches in Europe. This frequently results in a gap between North American and European release dates ranging from a few months to a year or more. For Persona 3, Atlus gave publishing duties to Koei. For Persona 4, European publishing was handled by Square Enix. Persona 4 Arena was originally published in Europe by Zen United after a long delay, but the digital rights were eventually returned to Atlus, resulting in the game being removed from PSN. Atlus ended up re-publishing the digital PlayStation version in Europe. They had previously digitally published the PSP port of Persona in Europe and Australia. Arena Ultimax was published in Europe by Sega, who had recently purchased Atlus' parent company. It was speculated that this could lead to a new trend that would shorten the release gap between North America and Europe. A regular publishing partner was Ghostlight, whose relations with Atlus went back to the European release of Nocturne. A more recent partner was NIS America, which published Persona 4 Golden, Persona Q, and Dancing All Night. Atlus' partnership with NIS America ended in 2016, with NIS America citing difficulties with the company since its acquisition by Sega as reasons for the split. As part of their statement, NIS America said that Atlus had become "very picky" about European partners, selecting those which could offer the highest minimal sales guarantee on their products. Sega of America and Atlus USA eventually entered into a partnership with European publishing company Deep Silver to publish multiple games in the region, including Persona 5. ### Localization The localizations for the Persona series are generally handled by translator Yu Namba of Atlus USA, who also handles localization for multiple other Megami Tensei games. Another prominent staff member was Nich Maragos, who worked with Namba on multiple Persona games until moving to Nintendo of America prior to 2015. The localization of Persona was handled by a small team, which put a lot of pressure on them as they needed to adjust the game for Western audiences: the changes implemented included altering names, changing the appearance of characters, and removing numerous cultural references. An entire alternate main quest was also removed. After Persona, it was decided that future Persona games should be as faithful as possible to their original releases. Namba's first localization project for the series was Eternal Punishment. For the release of Innocent Sin, there was a debate over whether to release it, as it contained potentially controversial content including allusions to Nazism. In the end, due to staff and resource shortages, Innocent Sin was passed over for localization in favor of its sequel Eternal Punishment. Later, when the company developed the PSP ports, the team released the ports of Persona and Innocent Sin overseas so fans attracted by Persona 3 and 4 would be able to easily catch up with the rest of the series. The localization for Persona was completely redone, reverting all the previous altered content and restoring all previously cut content. The port of Eternal Punishment was not localized due to "unusual circumstances", so the company released the original version on PSN instead. For the localizations of Persona 3 and 4, the team incorporated as much of the original content as possible, such as using Japanese honorifics and keeping the game's currency as yen rather than changing it. As a general rule, they incorporate cultural elements from the original versions unless they would not be understood by the player, such as with certain jokes. Nevertheless, some changes had to be made. In one instance, the character Mitsuru Kirijo was originally an English speaker, but her second language for the localized version was changed to French due to her cultured appearance. School tests also needed to be changed due to similar language-based issues. The Social Links were originally called but this was changed as the word "Community" had a very specific meaning in English. The new name was inspired by the way the character Igor made reference to the concept using words such as "society" and "bonds". Some in-game Easter egg references were also changed: in Persona 3 references to the larger Megami Tensei series by a character in an in-game MMORPG were changed to reference earlier Persona games, while mentions of a fictional detective in Persona 4 were altered to reference the Kuzunoha family from Eternal Punishment and the Devil Summoner series. Character names have also needed adjustment, such as the stage name of Persona 4 character Rise Kujikawa, and the way characters referred to each other was adjusted to appeal more to a western audience. Persona 5 was also localized in this fashion. The localized English names of games have also been altered. The banner title for Persona was changed from Megami Ibunroku to Revelations, principally because the team thought the latter name sounded "cool". The Revelations title was removed for Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment. After the successful release of Nocturne, the "Shin Megami Tensei" moniker was added to the series title to help with Western marketing. This has not been the case for some games: Persona 4 Arena's original title, Persona 4: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena, was shortened as it sounded "awkward", and the "Shin Megami Tensei" moniker was dropped as it would have made the title too long, which has been applied to every game in the series since. The same change was made for Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal, with the team dropping "The" that was in the Japanese title because it would have sounded "odd" in English-speaking regions. ## Reception As of November 2022, the series has sold over 16 million copies worldwide and generated over \$350 million in revenue. The first Persona was referred to at the time as a sleeper hit, and the success of it and Eternal Punishment helped establish both Atlus and Megami Tensei in North America. In Europe, the series did not become established prior to the release of Persona 3 and 4, both of which were highly successful in the region. According to Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka, the main turning point for the franchise was the release of Persona 3, which was a commercial success and brought the series to the attention of the mainstream gaming community. Persona 4 received an even better reception. The Persona series' success has allowed Atlus to build a strong player base outside of Japan, contributing to the success of other games such as Catherine. The Persona series has been referred to as the most popular spin-off from the Megami Tensei franchise, gaining notoriety and success in its own right. Io9's James Whitbrook commented that while "here in the west, we've got plenty of awesome urban fantasy, especially from a YA perspective. But what makes Persona interesting is that it's the familiar concept of Urban fantasy, the balance of the mundane "normal" life of the protagonists and the problems they have there with the fantastical nature of the supernatural world that lies beneath all that, from a Japanese perspective. Over here, that's much less common, and the way the series portrays urban fantasy through that lens is what makes it so different, especially from what you would normally expect from Japanese RPGs.". Nintendo Power, in an article concerning the Megami Tensei series, cited the Persona series' "modern-day horror stories" and "teams of Japanese high-school kids" as the perfect example of the franchise. Persona was mentioned in 1999 by GameSpot's Andrew Vestal as a game that deserved attention despite not aging well, saying "Examining Persona reveals three of the traits that make the series so popular - and unique - amongst RPG fans: demonology, negotiation, and psychology". The game has been named as a cult classic. Persona 3 was named by RPGamer as the greatest RPG of the past decade in 2009, and RPGFan listed Persona 3 and 4 in second and fourth place respectively in their similar 2011 list. Persona 3 was listed by Gamasutra as one of the 20 essential RPGs for players of the genre. Persona 4 was also listed by Famitsu as one of the greatest games of all time in a 2010 list. As well as gaining critical acclaim, the series has been the subject of controversy over its content. This controversy began with the localized banner title of the original Persona, which raised concerns due to its religious implications. Kurt Katala, writing for 1UP.com in 2006 about the controversial content of the Megami Tensei franchise as a whole, mentioned Innocent Sin's references to homosexuality, schoolyard violence, and Nazism, considering them possible reasons why the game was not originally released outside of Japan. In 1UP.com's 2007 game awards, which ran in the March 2008 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Persona 3 was given the "Most controversial game that created no controversy" award: the writers said "Rockstar's Hot Coffee sex scandal and Bully's boy-on-boy kissing's got nothing on this PS2 role-player's suicide-initiated battles or subplot involving student-teacher dating". Persona 4 has in turn been examined by multiple sites over its portrayal of character sexuality and gender identity. ## Related media The first anime adaptation of the Persona series, a television series titled Persona: Trinity Soul, aired in 2008. It was animated by A-1 Pictures, directed by Jun Matsumoto, written by a team that included Yasuyuki Muto, Shogo Yasukawa, and Shinsuke Onishi, and composed for by Taku Iwasaki. Its characters were designed by Soejima and Yuriko Ishii, while Persona designs were done by Nobuhiko Genma. It was distributed internationally by NIS America. Trinity Soul takes place in an alternate setting ten years after Persona 3, making it a non-canon entry in the franchise. An anime adaptation of the original Persona 4, Persona 4: The Animation, aired in 2011. The 25-episode series was produced by AIC ASTA and directed by Seiji Kishi. In 2014, a series based on Persona 4 Golden, titled Persona 4: The Golden Animation, was produced by A-1 Pictures. This series, which retains the cast of the original adaptation, dramatizes the new material included in Persona 4 Golden, focusing on the protagonist's encounters with new character Marie. A standalone prequel anime created by A-1 Pictures, Persona 5 The Animation: The Day Breakers, was released in September 2016 prior to the Japanese release of the game. A full anime series based on Persona 5, Persona 5: The Animation, aired in 2018. The original Persona 4 anime series was made into a condensed film adaptation titled Persona 4: The Animation - The Factor of Hope; it was released in Japanese cinemas in 2012. Persona 3 has also been adapted into a series of anime films produced by AIC ASTA and featuring staff from Persona 4: The Animation, released in cinemas in Japan and licensed for release overseas by Aniplex. The four films are titled \#1 Spring of Birth, \#2 Midsummer Knight's Dream, \#3 Falling Down, and \#4 Winter of Rebirth. They were released from 2013 to 2016. For both Persona 4: The Animation and the Persona 3 film series, one of the main concerns was the portrayal of the lead characters, which were originally dictated by player actions. Persona was adapted into an eight-issue manga series titled Megami Ibunroku Persona, originally serialized in 1996 and later reissued in 2009. A second spin-off manga, was released to tie in with the release of the Persona 2 games. Set within the same setting of the Persona 2 games, it follows a separate story. In its 2011 reissue, new material was added that connected the manga to the events of Innocent Sin. Persona 3, Persona 4, and Persona 5 have all received their own manga adaptations. Another manga based on Persona Q was also serialized: two separate manga storylines, based on the two storylines featured in the game, were written and dubbed Side:P3 and Side:P4. Multiple novels based on Persona 3 and 4 have also been released. Five stage plays based on Persona 3 have been produced under the banner Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade. They received limited runs and featured separate performances for the male and female versions of the game's protagonists. Persona 4 was also adapted into two stage plays, both produced by Marvelous AQL and receiving limited runs in 2012: Visualive and Visualive the Evolution. A stage play based on Persona 4 Arena was likewise given a limited run in December 2014, and one based on Persona 4 Arena Ultimax ran in July 2016. Atlus has created or hosted media dedicated to the Persona series. A dedicated magazine originally ran for ten issues between 2011 and 2012, and has been irregularly revived since then. An official talk show released on the official Persona website and Niconico, Persona Stalker Club, began in February 2014. Hosted by freelance writer Mafia Kajita and actress Tomomi Isomura, it was designed to deepen the connection between Atlus and the Persona fanbase. Concerts featuring music from the Persona series have also been performed, and some have received commercial releases on home media in Japan. Action figures and merchandise such as clothing have also been produced. The series was also represented in the 2018 crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with the April 2019 downloadable content (DLC) inclusion of Joker, the protagonist of Persona 5. Along with him, a Persona-themed stage, eleven musical tracks from the series, and Mii costumes of Morgana, Teddie, and the main protagonists from Persona 3 and 4 were also featured. In June 2022, as part of the series' 25th anniversary, Sega expressed in an interview with IGN, their desire to expand the Persona series and other Atlus properties into live-action film and television, as had been done with their flagship property, Sonic the Hedgehog and its 2020 film adaptation. Toru Nakahara, Sega's lead producer on the Sonic the Hedgehog films and the Netflix animated series Sonic Prime, stated of Atlus' games that, "Stories like those from the Persona franchise really resonate with our fans and we see an opportunity to expand the lore like no one has seen — or played — before". ## See also - List of best-selling Japanese role-playing game franchises - List of Megami Tensei media

American services and supply in the Siegfried Line campaign

American supply during WWII

American services and supply played a crucial part in the World War II Siegfried Line campaign, which ran from the end of the pursuit of the German armies from Normandy in mid-September 1944 until December 1944, when the American forces were engulfed by the German Ardennes offensive. In August 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the Seine and across France and Belgium to the German border instead of pausing to build up supplies and establish the line of communications as called for in the original Operation Overlord plan. The subsequent advance to the German border stretched the American logistical system to breaking point, and the advance came to a halt in mid-September. Problems with port capacity and transportation created many shortages, but many others were the result of mismanagement and underestimating requirements. A critical shortage of winter clothing developed from a reluctance to accept new items and a failure to order adequate quantities in the mistaken belief that the war would end before they were required. The winter of 1944–1945 in Northwest Europe was unusually cold and wet, and American soldiers were not trained in how to avoid cold injury. The American forces suffered 71,000 casualties from trench foot and frostbite. Artillery ammunition shortages that developed in the early days of the campaign increased casualties, delayed operations and lengthened the war. The specific causes of the shortage of artillery ammunition in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in 1944 varied over time: between June and November, there was insufficient discharge capacity over the beaches and through the ports; between August and October, supply lines were overstretched and inadequate to move enough ammunition to the front lines; from November 1944 to April 1945, there was insufficient production of ammunition in the United States. ## Background In the first seven weeks after the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, determined German opposition exploited the defensive value of the Normandy bocage country. The Allied advance was slower than the Operation Overlord plan had anticipated. Operation Cobra, which the First Army commenced on 25 July, effected a turnaround in the operational situation by achieving a breakout from the Normandy lodgment area. The 12th Army Group became active on 1 August, under the command of Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley. It initially consisted of the First Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Courtney Hodges, and the Third Army, under Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. The Ninth Army, under Lieutenant General William H. Simpson, joined the 12th Army Group on 5 September. British General Sir Bernard Montgomery, the commander of the British 21st Army Group, remained in command of all ground forces, British and American, until 1 September, when the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, opened his Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in France, and assumed direct command of the ground forces. This brought not just the 12th and 21st Army Groups under Eisenhower's direct command, but also Lieutenant General John C. H. Lee's Communications Zone (COMZ). Until then, Bradley had exercised control over the Communications Zone as the senior American commander on the continent. As such, he had prescribed stock levels in the depots and priorities for the delivery of supplies, and apportioned service units between the armies and the Communications Zone. Bradley believed that as the senior operational commander he should exercise such authority, as was the case in the British forces but, under the American organization, COMZ headquarters also functioned as that of the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA). On 24 August, Eisenhower decided to continue the pursuit of the retreating German forces beyond the Seine. This stretched the logistical system to breaking point. Between 25 August and 12 September, the Allied armies advanced from the D plus 90 phase line, the position the Operation Overlord plan expected to be reached 90 days after D-Day, to the D plus 350 one, moving through 260 phase lines in 19 days. The planners had estimated that no more than twelve divisions could be maintained beyond the Seine, but by September sixteen were, albeit on reduced scales. Logistical forecasts were repeatedly shown to be overly pessimistic, imbuing a sense of confidence that difficulties could always be overcome. The advance came to a halt in September. This was not a result of inadequate supplies or port capacity—there were still some 600,000 long tons (610,000 t) of supplies stockpiled in the Normandy lodgment area two months later—nor solely of a shortage of fuel. Rather, the problem was the inability to deliver fuel and supplies. Railways could not be repaired and pipelines could not be constructed quickly enough. Motor transport was used as a stopgap, but there was a shortage of suitable vehicles owing to political interference and production difficulties. Too few heavy trucks had been manufactured in the United States, and this compelled the use of the smaller general purpose GMC CCKW 21⁄2-ton 6×6 trucks for long hauls, for which they were unsuited. The roads often had shallow foundations, and soon deteriorated under sustained use by military vehicle traffic and autumn rains. Logistical difficulties, in particular shortages of food, fuel, ammunition and spare parts, were indeed critical and constituted a drag on operations, but they were not the only factors that brought the Allied advance to a halt. The American forces also had to contend with rugged terrain, worsening weather and, above all, stiffening German resistance. American forces were widely dispersed and, with the logistical situation preying on his mind, a cautious Hodges ordered his corps commanders to halt when they encountered strong resistance. As American forces confronted the defenses of the Siegfried Line, priority shifted from fuel to ammunition. ## Supply depots The comprehensive supply depot system envisaged by the Overlord planners did not exist in September 1944. The rapid advance led to the abandonment of Operation Chastity, the plan to develop Quiberon Bay as a port. In turn, this led to the scaling back of plans to develop a maintenance area in the vicinity of Rennes, Vitré, Laval, Segré and Châteaubriant. This left the maintenance area back in Normandy. A logical site further east would have been Paris, as it was a major communications hub, but SHAEF directed that a maintenance area should not be established around Paris. Eisenhower wanted to reserve Paris as a rest area for combat troops on furlough. He disapproved of the movement of COMZ headquarters to Paris, which was ordered by Brigadier General Royal B. Lord without Lee's permission. Soon COMZ headquarters occupied 167 hotels and the Seine Base Section another 129. By February 1945, 8,400 American and 700 British soldiers were arriving in Paris each day on 72-hour passes, but there were 21,000 troops stationed within 15 miles (24 km) of the city center, and another 140,000 in the Seine Department. As a result, only some minor depots were established in the Paris area. The COMZ staff looked for suitable sites in the British zone around Antwerp in Belgium, but the British would not agree to this. In September, major depots were established around Liege to support the First and Ninth Armies and Verdun to support the Third Army; the COMZ staff would have preferred Nancy and Metz for the latter, but these areas were still in German hands. These depots began receiving supplies directly from the ports and the beaches in Normandy, and gradually became the base depots for Class I, II and V classes of supply (rations, clothing and equipment, and ammunition). They therefore acted simultaneously as base, depot and issue depots. The opening of the port of Antwerp in November led to a flood of supplies that overwhelmed the depots around Liege and Verdun. To relieve the pressure on them, new maintenance areas were established around Mons and Charleroi. Major disruption of the supply system was caused by the German Ardennes offensive, which threatened the base depots. This prompted COMZ to halt the shipments to Liege and Verdun. Since cargo discharge operations had to continue at the port lest the tying up of shipping create a global shipping crisis, supplies piled up at the quays and on the rail lines. Representatives from the Army Service Forces (ASF) studied the situation in December 1944 and January 1945, and produced a series of recommendations. Lee took immediate action to establish the Class II and IV depots in Seine and Oise Base Sections and expand other depots in the Channel and Oise Base Sections. New depot areas were also established around Dijon and Nancy, and the supply depot system began moving towards the doctrinal ideal of a system of base, intermediate and advance depots. ## Winter clothing ### Development American troops stationed in the UK before D-Day led the life of garrison soldiers in a friendly country. Smart appearance was a priority, and the woolen serge service uniform was worn by headquarters staff and off-duty personnel. The jacket was hard to keep presentable in the UK where dry cleaning facilities were scarce, and pink trousers tended to show dirt, so many officers wore the dark olive drab ones instead. In particular, the M1941 Field Jacket came in for criticism because it required frequent washing, was difficult to iron, and the collar and cuffs tended to fray, resulting in a shabby appearance. American officers were impressed by the British battledress. This paired high-waisted fishtail back trousers with a short jacket that fit snugly around the waist. As well as providing a smart military appearance, its heavy wool fabric was extremely durable, could be cleaned by scrubbing, and did not require ironing. A shrink-resistant cotton lining meant that it could be worn with or without undergarments. It was based on the British civilian custom of wearing trousers with a waistcoat, which differed from American civilian men's fashion with its low-cut trousers supported by a belt. Some American troops arriving in 1942 were issued with the British battledress, and it was well received. An American version was then developed in the UK, which became known as the ETO or Eisenhower jacket. In March 1944, Eisenhower and Lee raised a requirement for 4,259,000 ETO jackets, of which 300,000 would be manufactured in the UK. The ETO quartermaster, Major General Robert McG. Littlejohn, met with Major General Lucius D. Clay at Army Service Forces headquarters. The British wool used in the ETO design was unobtainable in the United States, so the 18-ounce (510 g) serge used in the enlisted men's service coat was substituted. This defeated the purpose of a jacket that could be used as both a field and a dress uniform. It retained the more complicated features, making it hard to mass-produce, and Clay did not believe that more than 2.6 million could be delivered by the end of 1944, and offered Littlejohn 479,000 M1941 jackets as substitutes. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Quartermaster Corps had designed an entirely new winter uniform, the M1943 Uniform, based on the layered clothing principle. The centerpiece was the olive drab, 9-ounce (260 g), cotton sateen M1943 field jacket. The 3+1⁄2-pound (1.6 kg) M1943 field jacket was lighter than the 6+1⁄4-pound (2.8 kg) M1938 field overcoat, but laboratory testing showed that it kept the skin just as warm at both 0 °F (−18 °C) and 20 °F (−7 °C). Field tests were carried out in the Battle of Anzio. Littlejohn did not like the M1943 jacket. The first troops he encountered wearing it were part of a Women's Army Corps unit that arrived in early 1944, and he was appalled to hear them refer to it as a "maternity jacket". (The women's version of the M1943 jacket did not have the breast cargo pockets. The M1943 field jacket was the opposite of the "neat and snappy" look he desired. He informed ASF that the ETO would not accept it, but would take the M1941 jacket until the ETO jacket was available. However, the M1941 was no longer in production, and in May 1944 shipments of the M1943 jacket commenced. He did accept the sweater that was part of the M1943 uniform, ordering 2,250,000 from the New York Port of Embarkation (NYPE), and he ordered 2,580,000 of the new woolen sleeping bags. For protection against the rain, Littlejohn ordered 250,000 ponchos. These were preferred to the raincoats, as one size fit all, and they could be worn over the Mackinaw cloth overcoat. They were made from the same material as the raincoat; he would have preferred the nylon version, but these were reserved for use in the Pacific. He rejected the leather gloves of the M1943 because they hindered the use of the trigger finger, and asked for woolen ones instead. He also asked for shoepacs, rubber boots suited to wet conditions. The shoepac saw continuous development through 1943 and 1944, and were not standardized until 1945. All were earmarked for Alaska and the North African Theater of Operations (NATOUSA), and all that ASF could offer was 330,000 pairs of shoepacs of obsolescent designs, along with 900,000 pairs of ski socks, which could be worn with the shoepacs or larger-sized boots. ### Issue Troops participating in the assault phase of Operation Overlord were issued with a minimum amount of summer clothing and equipment; winter clothing was turned in before embarkation from the UK. The only replacement clothing carried was three pairs of socks. When the pursuit ended in early September, it was apparent that the troops had lost or discarded more equipment than had been worn out or destroyed in action, but large-scale salvage efforts were only just beginning, and their outcome could not be predicted. The provision of appropriate winter clothing was now more urgent than the replacement of summer clothing. Already the army quartermasters like the Third Army's Brigadier General Everett Busch were warning that it was starting to get cold on the front lines. Cold-weather clothing had not been a major item in the Operation Overlord planning, because the focus had been on the summer campaign in Normandy, and the campaign did not envisage the armies reaching the Ardennes or the Vosges, where cold-climate winter clothing would be vital, until May 1945. For the same reason, the medical annex of the Overlord plan did not mention cold injury, and the medical manual issued shortly after D-Day gave it only a brief mention, and recommended preventative measures that were impractical for troops in the field. Almost none of the troops had training in how to take care of their feet, and few medical or military officers had experience with cold injury. Winter clothing was available, but not where it was most needed. Shipping was the main bottleneck; by the end of September, there were 75 ships loaded with quartermaster supplies awaiting discharge in the ETO, for which there were only fourteen berths. The situation hardly improved in October, at the end of which there were 80 ships and only 18 berths. Backlogs remained even after the opening of the port of Antwerp in November and were not cleared until February 1945. Between June and August 1944 some 55,000 long tons (56,000 t) of cross-Channel cargo tonnage was allocated to clothing and personal equipment, but only 53 percent of that had been shipped. Some 62,000 long tons (63,000 t) remained in the UK, but its priority was so low that it could not be shipped before October. What had been shipped faced delays due to the overstretched and overburdened land transportation system. Of 54,200 long tons (55,100 t) of quartermaster Class II (which included clothing and footwear) and IV classes of supply unloaded at the ports in September, only 15,400 long tons (15,600 t) had been cleared, creating a 38,800-long-ton (39,400 t) backlog. By December, the backlog had grown to 88,600 long tons (90,000 t), and it was still 71,100 long tons (72,200 t) in January 1945. It fell to 28,300 long tons (28,800 t) in February. Of the First Army's average daily allocation of 4,076 long tons (4,141 t) in September, only 102 long tons (104 t) was set aside for Class II and IV supplies, and the average daily delivery was just 539 long tons (548 t). Littlejohn proposed that the allocation for rations and packaged fuel be reduced to allow for 50,750 long tons (51,560 t) of class II supplies, of which 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) would be winter clothing. Because the port of Cherbourg was so congested, he recommended that clothing for the Ninth Army in Brittany and the Communications Zone troops be brought in through the minor ports in Landing Ships, Tank (LSTs). He also wanted 6,000 long tons (6,100 t) for the troops in forward areas to be flown in by air, but the Assistant Chief of Staff (G-4) at COMZ, Brigadier General James H. Stratton, was unwilling to alter existing priorities laid down by the 12th Army Group, which gave precedence to fuel and ammunition, and Bradley supported him in this. Bradley accepted blame for his part in the situation that developed, later explaining that: > When the rains first came in November with a blast of wintry cold, our troops were ill-prepared for winter-time campaigning. This was traceable in part to the September crisis in supply for, during our race to the Rhine, I had deliberately by-passed shipments of winter clothing in favor of ammunition and gasoline. As a consequence, we now found ourselves caught short, particularly in bad-weather footgear. We had gambled in our choice and now were paying for the bad guess. Littlejohn attempted to work around the low priorities. Three DUKW companies moving up from Normandy on 16 September to support a crossing of the Rhine were dispatched loaded with 300,000 sets of warm undergarments for the First Army. An LST was made available to ship winter clothing for the Ninth Army through uncongested minor ports in Brittany. Ships carrying 800 long tons (810 t) of rations were diverted from Cherbourg to Morlaix to free up trains for the carriage of winter clothing. Seventh Army, which was supported by the Southern Line of Communications (SOLOC) instead of COMZ, and drew its supplies from NATOUSA, received winter clothing by air on 26 September. Littlejohn struck a deal with Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, the commander of the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe for bombers to deliver 41 percent of the winter clothing required by the First and Third Armies to forward airstrips. When the Third Army had moved from the UK to France in July, it had brought its duffel bags with it. These had been stored in the Normandy lodgment area. On 9 September, Busch asked the Advance Section (ADSEC) to move them forward. They were located and moved by truck to the nearest railhead by 25 September, but some had been pilfered and no longer contained their blankets or overcoats. In other cases, the contents were intact, but the owner had become a casualty. Some contained items duplicating ones that had already been re-issued. The cost of moving them forward was counted against the Third Army's rail transport allocation. In contrast, the First Army had turned in its duffel bags in the UK before embarkation. The contents should have been salvaged, with the overcoats sorted and returned to the stockpiles, but this process was still incomplete in September, as the most experienced salvage units had been sent to France. The infantry divisions were given priority for receiving winter clothing, and a full issue was made in the First and Third Armies in early October, although there were some shortages of overshoes, raincoats and leggings that took until the end of the month to remedy. The authorized number of blankets per man had been cut from four to two in the belief that the sleeping bag would replace the other two. No blankets were therefore shipped from the NYPE in August or September, but only 57,721 sleeping bags had been delivered instead of the expected two million. Littlejohn then placed an order for four million blankets. The NYPE responded by resuming the shipment of blankets in October and, by the end of the year, it had shipped two and a half million blankets and two million sleeping bags. In October, 6,000 of the new sleeping bags were issued to each of the divisions in the First Army, giving each man four blankets or a sleeping bag. The issue of winter clothing in October depleted the stocks in the UK. To rebuild them to the authorized 45 days, and to build up 60 days' reserves on the continent where the troop basis was expected to rise from 1,601,700 men and women on 20 September to 2,673,600 by 31 December, new orders were placed with the NYPE in early October. The requirements included 1.5 million blankets, 600,000 overcoats, 900,000 pairs of overshoes, 2 million shirts, 3 million pairs of trousers, 2,110,000 sweaters and 2,270,000 sleeping bags. The orders totaled over 90,000 measurement tons (100,000 m³), of which 62,400 measurement tons (70,700 m³) was requested to be delivered on an emergency basis by the end of the month. To accomplish this, the NYPE had to make major adjustments to the convoy shipping schedules. ### Footwear The issue of replacement factors, on which both manufacturing and reserves were based, was a complicated one. In the case of socks, the ETO allowance was three pairs of cushion-soled and two pairs of light or heavy woolen socks per man, for which the War Department's replacement factors were respectively 11.1 and 25 percent per month. So a pair of cushion-soled socks would last about nine months, and a pair of woolen socks for just four. But the former were in short supply, so heavy or (more usually) light socks were issued instead. Between June and August, 5.1 percent of cushion-soled socks and 55.4 percent of light socks had to be replaced. In October, the replacement factors for cushion-soled socks and other socks were raised to 25 and 33 percent respectively. In the meantime, Eisenhower had adopted a suggestion from the Surgeon General, Major General Norman T. Kirk, that every man be provided with a pair of clean socks each day. To provide for all the socks going to and from the laundry units, a temporary increase in the replacement factor to 33 percent was authorized. According to the ETO Chief Surgeon, Major General Paul R. Hawley, "the plain truth is that the footwear furnished US troops is, in general, lousy." Except in the Seventh Army, almost all soldiers wore either combat boots or service shoes. The service shoe had to be worn with canvas leggings, which complicated taking them off for foot care. Their cut was such that they put pressure on the upper part of the foot, especially when heavy or extra socks were worn, and even when correctly fitted had to be laced up tightly, restricting blood circulation. Both the combat boots and service shoes fit too snugly, even when properly fitted, which was frequently not the case because there was a shortage of both in large and wide sizes. The mix of sizes was based on World War I experience, but it appeared that the next generation was larger. Additional shoes and boots were usually issued in the same size as the original pair, but feet tended to widen after intensive physical training and marching. This precluded wearing several pairs of socks. Most soldiers had only one pair of shoes or boots, usually the one issued to them before D-Day. Crucially, neither the service shoes nor the combat boots were waterproof or even water resistant. The soles and seams leaked, and the leather was permeable. Dubbin was supplied to preserve the leather, but it did not make the shoes and boots waterproof. The Seventh Army obtained 90,000 shoepacs through NATOUSA channels, and had them in time for the winter. The First, Third and Ninth Armies did not fare as well, and did not receive their initial issue until the second half of January. When it became clear the combat boot was not adequate for the conditions, Littlejohn placed an order on 8 December for another 500,000 pairs of shoepacs in addition to the 446,000 already shipped and those issued to the Seventh Army. The shoepacs issued to the Seventh Army were of an old type, and those issued to the other armies were even older: they were too short for wading through water or mud, lacked heels and arch supports, and the rubber soles wore out too quickly. They had inadequate ventilation, and feet in them perspired even in quite cold weather. When it was cold, the inner soles froze, making the feet uncomfortably cold; when it warmed up they became wet. This set up a cycle of perspiration, maceration and ultimately hospitalization. A major contributing factor was insufficient training in their use. Those who learned how to wear them correctly came to appreciate them, and preferred them to combat boots in wet and cold weather. Lacking proper footwear, soldiers in the field improvised. A favorite was to discard the service shoes or combat boots entirely and just wear the rubber overshoes with six or eight pairs of socks, or with boots made from army blankets. Only the Seventh Army was properly equipped with overshoes. In the Third Army, there was only one pair between four men in November; nine divisions were not fully equipped by December, and seven were still not fully equipped by January 1945. As with boots, large sizes were in short supply, but whereas there were ninety sizes of boots, there were only ten of overshoes. The shortage of large sizes was not remedied until March 1945. Overshoes impeded fast movement and were difficult to carry, so they were often discarded before an attack. Armored infantry units could carry them in their vehicles, but they were often lost when a vehicle was knocked out in combat. Some of the older types were manufactured when rubber was in short supply, and had canvas tops which tore easily, leaked and soon wore out; these were superseded by an all-rubber design when more rubber became available. ## Medical The winter of 1944–1945 in Northwest Europe was unusually cold and wet. In November and the first three weeks of December, the average daily temperature was around 40 °F (4 °C), and the daily minimum was seldom above freezing. This was accompanied by heavy rainfall that commenced in October. A cold front then passed through, and the average daily temperatures remained below or slightly above freezing until the end of January. American operations had been at a low tempo in late September and October, but Eisenhower decided that the logistical situation had improved sufficiently to warrant a resumption of major offensive operations. The Third Army commenced the Battle of Metz on 8 November, followed by the Seventh Army on 13 November, and the First and Ninth Armies three days later. The offensive was conducted over wet and often flooded terrain. The weather conditions were conducive to cold injuries like trench foot, which is associated with wet conditions, in October and November, and frostbite, which is associated with cold weather, in December and January. But the weather was only one contributing factor. Inadequate clothing and footwear, keeping troops in the front line for excessive periods, and poor foot care were all important factors. Five weeks of fighting in November and early December cost the 12th Army Group about 64,000 battle casualties, and there were another 12,000 casualties from trench foot. Like the battle casualties, they fell disproportionately on the riflemen who were the army's fighting edge. Most of the trench foot casualties would never be declared fit for combat again, and many were crippled for life. In 1944–1945, there were 71,038 cold injury cases in the American forces in the ETO, of which 53,911 were trench foot, 13,134 were frostbite, 204 were chilblains and 3,789 were other ailments. The British and Canadian armies combined reported only 206 cases of cold injury. On 16 December, the American forces were struck by the Ardennes offensive, and there was particularly heavy fighting. The ADSEC hospitals around Liege started to fill up, and by 18 December thirteen hospital trains were running between Liege and the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris. A lesser but significant number also arrived from the Third Army at the Gare de l'Est, and in January it also started to receive patients from SOLOC when the hospitals there became overloaded by the German Nordwind offensive. The patients included about 2,000 who had been evacuated from First Army hospitals that were threatened by the German advance, although only the 130th General Hospital at Ciney was forced to temporarily relocate. Some of the hospitals around Liege suffered casualties of their own from V-weapons, air raids and long-range artillery fire. The worst affected was the 76th General Hospital, which was struck by a V-1 flying bomb on 8 January 1945 that killed 24 staff and patients and wounded 20 more. The Gare Saint-Lazare was bombed on 26 December; a hospital train was destroyed and the station was put out of action for 48 hours. Three more hospital trains were temporarily put out of action when an ammunition dump in the Normandy Base Section exploded. By 28 December, the hospitals of the Seine Base section around Paris were almost full, with 14,000 patients. Where possible, patients were moved to hospitals in the Normandy and Brittany Base Sections. Evacuation to the UK by sea and air was disrupted by bad weather, and also had to be halted twice when the hospitals in the UK Base Section threatened to overflow. In all, 85,000 patients were evacuated to the UK by the sea shuttle running between Cherbourg and Southampton in December, January and February. Starting in February, the Air Transport Command began flying 2,000 patients a month across the Atlantic. A total of 24,666 patients were moved from the UK to the United States by air and sea in January, followed by 29,743 in February, and 30,410 in March. ## Ammunition ### Shortages Ammunition usage is difficult to forecast, as it is dependent on tactical and operational factors that are difficult to predict. Moreover, different tactical circumstances demand different calibers and types of ammunition. Ammunition shortages developed in the early days of the campaign in Northwest Europe that increased casualties, delayed operations and lengthened the war. The principal causes of the shortage of artillery ammunition in the ETO in 1944 and 1945 varied over time: - from June to November, there was insufficient discharge capacity over the beaches and through the ports; - between August and October, supply lines were overstretched and inadequate to move enough ammunition to the front lines; and - from November 1944 to April 1945, there was insufficient production of ammunition in the United States. American tactics relied heavily on fire support, so the ammunition shortage had a severe effect on operations, especially in October when the armies were facing the defenses of the Siegfried Line, and it ruled out major offensives. The First Army's operations were restricted to the Battle of Aachen, and the Third Army had to call off the Battle of Metz owing to ammunition shortages. The main weapon of the divisions was the 105 mm howitzer, for which 12th Army Group recommended an allocation of 65 rounds per gun per day. In the week ending 21 October, the First Army fired 30 rounds per gun per day of 105 mm ammunition for a total of 109,469 rounds, while the Third Army fired just 1.1 rounds per gun per day for a total of 3,401 rounds. It was a similar story with the 155 mm howitzers; the First Army fired 15 rounds per gun per day, expending 24,341 rounds in total, while the Third Army fired 0.4 rounds per gun per day, expending a total of 553 rounds. Most of the First Army's fighting was around Aachen. Between 11 October and 7 November, the Third Army fired 76,325 rounds of all calibers, which represented barely one day's usage during the high-intensity operations in the Ardennes in December. During September, the priority at Cherbourg was disembarking more troops, and worsening weather affected unloading over the Normandy beaches. As a result, only two ammunition ships were unloaded in the first week of October. Lee conducted a search of abandoned ammunition dumps in Normandy, and discovered 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of ammunition. He also had LSTs loaded in England so ammunition could be discharged over the beaches at Le Havre. The quantity of ammunition unloaded each day rose slowly during October, although the target of 6,000 long tons (6,100 t) per day was not met until 23 October, when 7,617 long tons (7,739 t) were unloaded. Unloading peaked at over 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) per day on 4 and 5 November, but then fell as the backlog of ammunition ships awaiting discharge was cleared, and thereafter discharges were dependent on receipts from the United States, which averaged 6,614 long tons (6,720 t) between 19 October and 12 November. Most of this was shipped directly to the army depots, but by the time Operation Queen began on 16 November, the ADSEC depots held nearly 10,000 long tons (10,000 t) of ammunition. ### Workarounds The armies worked around the shortages in several ways, usually through ammunition rationing. The 12th Army Group also attempted to impose limits on ammunition usage but, unlike the armies, it was not an administrative formation, and as such had no control over the distribution or disposition of ammunition. The rationing system tended to aggravate shortages, and encourage wasteful competition between the armies. The first army to recognize that a particular type was going to be in short supply could requisition as much of it as possible, thereby initiating the shortage and depriving the other armies of their fair share. The rationing system was not responsive to the tactical situation, and units facing a German counter-attack on the sixth day of the ration week might not know how much ammunition would be available beyond the next two days. Rationing encouraged wasteful shooting to use up the ration or falsified expenditure reports to create secret reserves. On 11 October 1944, the 12th Army Group announced a credit system, which became operative once sufficient stocks were built up in the ammunition depots around Liege, Soissons and Verdun. Under this system, the 12th Army Group allocated stocks of ammunition in the depots to the armies on a monthly basis. Requisitions by the armies had to show the credit number. Although it required more bookkeeping, it gave the 12th Army Group a better picture of the stockpile. The credit system prevented over-requisitioning, and since ammunition was allocated to a particular army, it discouraged waste and encouraged conservation in quiet periods. The armies regarded the credit system as less than ideal for two reasons. Firstly, rationing remained in effect, so although they might have ammunition, they might not be able to use it. Secondly, there was still uncertainty about future deliveries. The 12th Army Group resolved the former by abolishing rationing on 5 November, and attempted to ameliorate the latter by providing 30-day forecasts, which were updated every ten days. The credit system did not guarantee an adequate amount of ammunition, but it did enable the armies to make the best use of what they had. In some cases, shortages could be alleviated by the substitution of non-standard ammunition. Although better than nothing, this decreased range, accuracy and effect. Formations could also switch weapons, employing tanks, tank destroyers and anti-aircraft guns for which ammunition was more plentiful in lieu of field artillery. Three battalions were equipped with British 25-pounders, for which ammunition could be obtained from the 21st Army Group. Another alternative source of ammunition was stocks captured from the Germans during the rapid advances in August and September. Captured dumps near Verdun and Soissons contained French 155 mm howitzer ammunition, which was identical to that of the American 155 mm Howitzer M1. Between 26 September and 6 November 1944, the Third Army's XX Corps usage of this caliber was entirely drawn from captured stocks, and the First Army M12 Gun Motor Carriages fired 7,000 rounds of captured ammunition, mostly against concrete emplacements in the Siegfried Line. French Canon de 75 modèle 1897 ammunition was compatible with the 75mm gun M2–M6 used in the Sherman tank, and in the Battle of Fort Driant a tank battalion used exclusively French ammunition. German 8 cm Granatwerfer 34 ammunition was found to be compatible with the American 81 mm M1 mortar, and the First Army fired 300,000 rounds. Some artillery battalions were equipped with captured weapons, and the XX Corps attack on Maizières-lès-Metz on 10 October was supported by captured German 88 mm guns and 105 mm howitzers, Soviet 76.2 mm guns and French 155 mm howitzers. It was reported that German ammunition contained a higher proportion of dud rounds than American ammunition. ### Sorting It was much easier to identify stocks of artillery ammunition than spare parts. For camouflage purposes, shells were painted olive drab, except for chemical rounds, which were gray. The filler was indicated by colored bands: yellow for high explosive; purple for incendiary on olive shells; green for poison gas; red for tear gas; and yellow for smoke on gray shells. The packaging gave the standard nomenclature and the lot number, which consisted of the manufacturer's initials and a serial number. Maximum accuracy required that the ballistic properties of the ammunition be absolutely identical, but this was difficult to achieve under wartime mass-production conditions with the technology of the time. The best assurance of identical ballistic properties was therefore to fire ammunition from the same lot. Ideally, ammunition would be delivered to a battalion in lots of at least 500 rounds, but there were many places between the factory and the field battery where lots could be broken up. Frequently small, mixed lots were received from the ports, and until November the pressure to unload ammunition over the beaches and move it forward as quickly as possible militated against preserving lot integrity. A survey of the ammunition drawn by five field artillery battalions between 27 and 30 September from the same ammunition supply point indicated that the average number of rounds per lot varied from 8.2 to 29.9. An examination of the stocks of 105 mm howitzer rounds at one Third Army ammunition supply point revealed that there were 7,445 rounds from 308 lots. By 3 November 1944, the First Army had spent 25,000 man-hours segregating lots by hand. The NYPE attempted to ensure that ships were loaded with the largest number of rounds per lot and the fewest number of lots, and that lots were stowed together. Starting in November, all US ammunition entered the ETO through just three ports, where unloading was supervised by an ordnance detachment who ensured that the lots were not broken up. Railroad cars were loaded with ammunition from only one lot, and all the ammunition unloaded from a particular ship was dispatched to a single ammunition depot. In turn, the armies attempted to draw lots from the depots to a single ammunition supply point. ### Production The United States was not as fully mobilized as its Allies or opponents, and American production, while great, was not outstanding, considering its large population, well-developed pre-war industrial and technological base, and access to raw materials. Munitions production peaked in the last quarter of 1943, after a War Department Procurement Review Board headed by Major General Frank R. McCoy had recommended cuts in production on the grounds that excessive stocks had been built up in the United States and overseas theaters. The Ordnance Department strongly objected to this on the grounds that stocks were not excessive, and that the expenditure rates in the North African campaign might not be indicative of those of the campaign in Northwest Europe, but to no avail. Unlike other items of supply, there was no agreement on what was an adequate supply of ammunition. To avoid overproduction, the Army Service Forces directed that war production in 1944 would be strictly limited to what was listed under the Army Supply Program. As a result, many ammunition plants were closed or converted to the production of other goods. This particularly affected the larger calibers, from the 155 mm gun and 155 mm howitzer, through to the 8 inch howitzer, 8 inch gun and 240 mm howitzer, because US Army thinking in 1942 was that medium and heavy artillery was not sufficiently mobile for operations in Europe, and that aircraft could replace heavy artillery. On that assumption, medium and heavy artillery pieces and their ammunition were given a low priority for production, and were repeatedly cut back in the Army Supply Program, thereby saving steel and shipping space. This decision began to be reversed in March 1944, when orders went out to increase production of 240 mm artillery ammunition to 40,000 rounds per month. This was followed in April by orders for increased production of 8 inch gun, 8 inch howitzer, 155 mm gun, 155 mm howitzer and 4.5 inch gun ammunition; the authorized increase in production for 155 mm howitzer ammunition was particularly large: an increase of 1,303,000 rounds per month. Around \$203 million (equivalent to \$ in ) was spent on new facilities to replace the ones that had been closed just months before. By November 1944, shell shortages had led to rounds being shipped directly from the factories as soon as the TNT filler had cooled. Between January 1944 and February 1945, the percentage of rounds shipped directly from the plants rose from 28.6 to 50.12 percent. Direct shipment saved about ten days' travel time and about \$1,000 () per railroad car in dunnage and haulage costs. On 1 December, the Ordnance Department was directed to step up production of light and medium artillery and 60 mm and 81 mm mortars, with production of 155 mm gun ammunition to be increased from 400,000 to 600,000 rounds per month. Manpower was the most critical limitation. Many women were hired for jobs that were formerly done by men, and in some plants half the employees were women. To provide more skilled machinists, tool makers and machine operators, the commander of ASF, General Brehon B. Somervell, released servicemen to work in foundries, and furloughed up to 2,500 men for ninety days at a time to help manufacture 105 mm artillery ammunition. In December 1944, the Office of War Mobilization asked the War Department to draft men under the age of 38 who voluntarily left essential industrial employment. Some 71,000 men fell into this category, of whom 12,000 were declared fit for service and drafted. ## Tanks Before D-Day, ETOUSA expressed concerns that the loss rate for tanks would be higher than the War Department's 7 percent per month replacement factor, but the War Department was reluctant to authorize an increase without data based on actual combat experience. Actual losses were considerably higher. Tank losses in August and September respectively had been 25.3 percent and 16.5 percent of establishment. Reserves became depleted, and it became impossible to keep tank battalions at full strength. To share the available tanks more equitably, the First Army adopted temporary tables of organization and equipment (TO&E) that cut the number of medium tanks in the 2nd and 3rd Armored Divisions from 232 to 200, in the rest from 168 to 150, and in separate tank battalions from 54 to 50. The Ninth Army soon adopted the same temporary tables. By November, the 12th Army Group had only 3,344 tanks against a TO&E requirement of 3,409 and an authorized reserve of 937; two tank battalions had fewer than ten serviceable tanks, and most had between 75 and 90 percent of their TO&E. In December, ETOUSA asked the War Department for an additional 1,010 tanks to be shipped in addition to the 250 scheduled to arrive in January 1945. At this point, the First Army was engulfed in the fighting in the Ardennes, and it lost nearly 400 tanks in December. ETOUSA asked for a loan of 75 tanks designated for the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, United States Army (MTOUSA) that had been unloaded in Marseilles, on the understanding that they would be replaced from the tanks being shipped in January. The MTOUSA Theater commander, General Joseph T. McNarney, agreed to release 150 tanks. An approach was then made to Montgomery, who agreed to release 351 Sherman tanks from British stocks. He could afford to do this because the British Army had amassed a reserve of 1,900 Shermans in the UK that had been acquired under Lend-Lease. It was decided to allocate the entire American production to the US forces until they built up a reserve of 2,000 tanks, but this was not expected to occur before mid-1945. A casualty of the tank shortage was the plan to improve the quality of the American armored forces. Under the circumstances, ETOUSA had no choice but to continue to accept deliveries of the obsolescent Shermans armed with the 75 mm gun, although the NYPE gave priority to shipping the 76 mm gun version. Deliveries of the latter fell behind schedule, partly because of the change to the horizontal volute spring suspension necessitated by the heavier gun, and partly due to retooling for the new 90 mm gun tank. Not until January 1945 did the theater feel able to request that no more 75 mm gun Shermans be shipped. Plans to upgrade 300 Shermans with the British 17-pounder like the 21st Army Group was doing had to be shelved because there were no spare tanks to upgrade. Improved ammunition in the form of high velocity armor piercing rounds became available for the 76 mm gun, but less than two rounds per gun per month were received before March 1945. Shermans armed with the 105 mm howitzer met the need for a tank with a more powerful high explosive armament, and were available in sufficient numbers, but they proved a disappointment due to the lack of a powered turret traverse. This was remedied, but Shermans so equipped were not received by the NYPE until April 1945. Meanwhile, it began shipping the replacement for the Sherman, the M26 Pershing, to the ETO in January 1945. ## Rations In the wake of the pursuit to the German border, stocks of rations fell to their lowest level on 9 September, when the First Army reported that it had only one and a half days of rations on hand, and the Third Army reported that it had less than one day's worth. This was mainly due to transportation difficulties causing deliveries to fall short of requirements. Only 260,000 rations were delivered to the First Army on 11 September, 100,000 less than its strength, and average daily issues in the Third Army for the period from 8 to 13 September were 153,000 rations, about 60,000 less than its actual strength. At the same time, the number of prisoners of war that ADSEC had to feed rose from 150,000 to 1,500,000. Rations were supplemented with captured German stocks. The Third Army seized 1,300 long tons (1,300 t) of frozen beef and 250 long tons (250 t) of canned meat at Homécourt on 9 September, and the First Army captured 265 long tons (269 t) of fresh beef at Namur on 13 September. Captured stocks also provided some relief from monotonous diets. During the pursuit, transportation difficulties and tactical considerations had led to the widespread consumption of operational rations, the C ration, K ration and 10-in-1 ration, especially in the combat zone, and they represented 48 percent of the ration consumption instead of the planned 18 percent. For a while it looked like the stocks of operational rations would run out. This prompted a 7 September order from Littlejohn that combat units in the combat zone would be issued with 38 percent B rations and those in the communications zone with 95 percent B rations. The A ration was the standard garrison ration; the B ration was the same, but without its perishable components. Keeping the components of the A and B rations "balanced", that is, in the correct proportions so the cooks could follow the Army menus and avoid having to serve the same meals too often, was a frustrating task. Although commodity-loaded ships came with balanced rations, some components might have been substituted for others by the originating depots or the NYPE. On arrival in the theater, the shiploads could become mixed up when they were unloaded onto trains, or the trains could get mixed up during shunting. Pilferage was also a problem at every stage. By September there were 63,212,685 pounds (28,672,792 kg) of unbalanced supplies. Since the armies had almost no reserves, if they were issued unbalanced rations then that was what they ate. Stock levels eventually recovered, and by the start of the November offensive the First Army had 13.4 days of supply, the Third Army had 5.9, the Ninth Army had 9.8, ADSEC had 4.8, and COMZ had 10.6. COMZ continued to forward rations directly to the armies until the last week of November, when the depot system became operational, with Depot Q-179 at Liege serving the First and Ninth Armies, and Depot Q-178 at Verdun supplying the Third Army. During the German Ardennes offensive, the First Army drew rations from the ADSEC depots around Liege while its forward depots were hastily evacuated. The temporary suspension of deliveries caused an accumulation of rations at Depot Q-171 in Cherbourg. With the permission of the mayor, the depot commander, Colonel Chapin Weed, arranged for several streets to be blocked off so they could be used for open storage. In this manner the contents of an entire ship could be kept together and the rations kept balanced. Although operational rations provided the required nutrition, this was only the case when all the components were consumed. To preserve the health of the troops, Littlejohn wanted to provide fresh produce for soldiers who had been eating operational rations for over a month. Before D-Day, the British government set aside civilian-operated cold storage facilities in the UK for American needs. When the first commodity-loaded reefer ships arrived from the US carrying perishables earmarked for American troops on the continent, they were unloaded in the UK and transferred to refrigerated coasters for the trip to France. The first of these, the coaster Empress of Athol, anchored off Omaha Beach with 489 long tons (497 t) of meat and butter on 15 July, and was unloaded by DUKWs. It made two more trips at weekly intervals. On 31 July, the SS Albangarez arrived at Cherbourg with 2,500 long tons (2,500 t) of perishables, which were distributed by the 3612th Transportation Corps Refrigeration Companies and the 279th and 484th Quartermaster Refrigeration Companies, which were equipped with refrigerated trailers. The ETO had a fixed allocation of five fast reefers with a capacity of 23,000 deadweight tons (23,000 deadweight metric tons) and five slow ones with a capacity of 12,000 deadweight tons (12,000 deadweight metric tons). Since the number allocated to the theater was fixed, monthly shipments to the theater depended on turnaround times. Assuming six weeks for the fast vessels and seven for the slow ones, the NYPE could deliver 22,500 deadweight tons (22,900 deadweight metric tons) per month. This proved unachievable; cargoes were seldom discharged in less than three weeks. Littlejohn therefore asked the NYPE to cut shipments for October by 15,000 long tons (15,000 t), and November by 10,000 long tons (10,000 t). The NYPE did not like this idea; an idle reefer was likely to be transferred to the South Pacific. To allow for longer turnaround times, Littlejohn suggested that shipments of processed meats such as bologna, cervelat and salami might be shipped in regular dry storage, thereby saving about 33 percent of reefer space, and permitting longer turnarounds. This proved practical, and during the winter months they were delivered with little spoilage, as were fresh eggs. The long turnaround times were the result of several factors. The delivery of perishables was a complicated task involving many components that had to work in concert, and for some time the required coordination was lacking. When a reefer arrived, extraneous deck cargo had to be removed before the hatches could be opened. Unloading was usually performed by DUKWs since quayside berths were scarce until Antwerp was opened. Arrangements would be made for the 2nd Military Railway Service to provide a train of reefer cars. These cars had to arrive at the port in plenty of time so the cars could be cleaned, cooled and then inspected by the Veterinary Corps. A complete train was preferred, as a few cars attached to a train carrying other goods were unlikely to retain their priority and were liable to be delayed en route. The slow turnaround of reefer cars made it harder to assemble the next train, which in turn slowed ship turnaround. By 31 December 1944, there were 509 refrigerated cars on hand, of which 181 were American and the rest were German, French, Belgian and Italian. The number of meat meals served in the Communications Zone was cut back from twelve to seven per week in October to allow for turkey to be provided to the troops for Thanksgiving. Poultry was not normally on the military menu because it was bulkier than beef or pork; a turkey meal required three and a half times the refrigeration space of a regular meat meal. The commitment to provide a turkey dinner had been made before the implications of the rapid advance in September had been fully understood, but it was felt that the effect on morale would be severe if the Army reneged on the promise. In November, the SS Great Republic arrived with a cargo that included 1,604 long tons (1,630 t) of turkey, which was distributed by refrigerated vans. ## Liquid fuels In September both the armies and the Communications Zone were beset with a shortage of fuel. By the third week in September, the Third Army, which was trying to get across the Moselle River, reported that it had less than a half a day's supply on hand; the First Army, facing the Siegfried Line, reported that it had none at all. Even the Communications Zone only had a day and a half's worth on hand in the first week of October. By this time, requirements for MT80 gasoline (80 octane fuel for vehicles) for forces operating beyond the Seine had risen to 1,616,600 US gallons (6,119,000 L) per day, which was 5,900 long tons (6,000 t). Part of the problem was the rate of consumption, which reached a record high of 248.3 long tons (252.3 t) per division slice per day in September. It dropped to 197.2 long tons (200.4 t) in October, and then to 164.2 long tons (166.8 t) in November. In planning for its future needs, the Chief Petroleum Officer at ETOUSA, Colonel Elmer E. Barnes recommended 207 long tons (210 t) per division slice. At the same time the proportion of MT80 was raised: in pre-D-Day planning it had been assumed that 79 percent of consumption would be in the form of MT80, but in practice MT80 accounted for 90 percent of consumption. ETOUSA therefore requested that 85 percent of shipments be MT80. It was uncertain whether this volume could be handled. In September there were only two terminals on the continent in Allied hands where bulk petroleum could be received: Cherbourg and Port-en-Bessin in Normandy. The latter was dependent on tombolas, flexible floating ship-to-shore pipelines that allowed oil tankers to discharge while anchored offshore. These were subject to disruption from rough weather, which damaged two tombola berths in the first week of October, forcing tankers to divert to Cherbourg. Cherbourg also had limitations; there was only one tanker berth, on the exposed Digue de Querqueville. It too was subject to disruption by bad weather; a storm on 4 October destroyed eight of the ten intake pipelines and halted discharge for eight hours, and slowed it for another twenty-four. The storage facilities at Cherbourg could hold 250,000 US barrels (30,000,000 L) of MT80, which was initially thought to be ample, but was soon revealed to be insufficient. A pipeline was laid to connect Cherbourg with the Minor System storage tanks around Port-en-Bessin. The Major Pipeline System had its origin at Cherbourg, but in September its construction lagged far behind the advancing armies. Of its three 6-inch (15 cm) pipelines, the most advanced had reached Chartres, which was 20 miles (32 km) short of the Seine. A second pipeline reached Alençon, and the third was back at Domfront. Two trains per day were devoted to hauling the pipes and other materials for the pipelines, but progress was slow. The first pipeline did not reach Coubert, where storage tanks were available, until early October, and the other two lines did not reach it until December. Coubert remained the eastern terminal of the pipeline system until construction resumed in January 1945. Between them the Major and Minor Systems had 950 miles (1,530 km) of pipelines and a storage capacity of 850,500 US barrels (101,410,000 L). On 23 September the responsibility for the pipelines was taken away from base sections and placed under the Military Pipeline Service, under the command of Colonel John L. Person, who reported to the Chief Engineer of ETOUSA. From the second week of October, US forces were authorized to draw up to 500 long tons (510 t) per day from the British-operated terminal at Ostend. Work was also begun to develop capacity at the Seine ports, which had been allocated for American use. At Le Havre, the petroleum handling and storage facilities were captured relatively intact. Tankers could discharge into barges or coastal tankers that could take the fuel up river to Petit-Couronne, or into storage tanks at Le Havre, which were connected to Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine via a 10-inch (25 cm) pipeline. It was estimated that Le Havre could handle 5,000 long tons (5,100 t) per day, of which 3,000 long tons (3,000 t) would be cleared using the pipeline. The first bulk fuel was discharged at Le Havre on 31 October, but the pipeline was not operational until December, and decanting and loading facilities at the three ports were not completed until January 1945. Antwerp promised greater capacity, and its storage facilities could hold up to 1,260,000 US barrels (150,000,000 L), of which the US forces were allocated 950,000 US barrels (113,000,000 L). The first tanker berthed at Antwerp on 3 December. Plans called for laying a 6-inch (15 cm) pipeline for MT80 and four 4-inch (10 cm) pipelines, of which two were for MT80 and two for avgas. Work began on 8 December; it proceeded from multiple points at once, and reached Maastricht by the end of January 1945. The pipehead there was eventually supplying 30,000 US barrels (3,600,000 L) per day. Although gasoline arrived in bulk in tankers, most was issued packaged in 5-US-gallon (19 L) jerricans, of which there was a serious shortage owing to wasteful practices during the Normandy campaign. By the end of November, a million discarded or abandoned jerricans had been recovered, but 500,000 were still missing. It had been intended that decanting would be carried out by COMZ, but due to the slow progress of pipeline construction, by mid-September the armies were receiving fuel in bulk in tank cars and tank trucks which brought it from the pipeheads at Chartres and Alençon, or directly from Cherbourg. Large shipments of packaged fuel continued to be made from Cherbourg, which totaled 1,600 long tons (1,600 t) by truck and 800 long tons (810 t) by rail in October, but decanting operations at Chartres were hampered by mud and rain. The Military Pipeline Service located an abandoned autodrome at Linas, where it built storage tanks. The armies began doing their own decanting, but these efforts met with mixed success. The proper dispensing equipment was not always available, and was often operated inefficiently. Fuel deliveries were sporadic and unpredictable. In November, ADSEC established large depots around Liege to serve First and Ninth Armies, and around Verdun to serve the Third Army. Movements of jerricans to and from Cherbourg were halted, and henceforth all forward movement of fuel was in bulk over the pipelines or by rail. With the opening of Antwerp, fuel for First and Ninth Armies was landed there or at Ostend and transported in tanker cars to Liege, where it was decanted into jerricans. Fuel for the Third Army came from Cherbourg, went to Chartres by pipeline, and then by tanker car to Verdun, where it was decanted. By mid-December, the First Army had 7 days' supply of fuel on hand, the Third Army had 8.8, the Ninth Army had 12.8, and the Communications Zone had 12.03, when the American forces were struck by the German Ardennes offensive. German air raids hit the Third Army decanting point at Mancieulles and the COMZ pipehead at Coubert; a backup facility for Coubert was established at Grisy-Suisnes. During the German Ardennes offensive, the First Army's depots at Spa and Stavelot, which held 12,300 long tons (12,500 t) (about 3,000,000 US gallons (11,000,000 L) of fuel, lay directly in the path of the German advance. The First Army Quartermaster, Colonel Andrew T. McNamara, suspended all deliveries of fuel to the truckhead at Bütgenbach. He was given a report from the intelligence section that the Germans were relying on captured fuel to sustain their offensive, so he ordered the truckhead to be evacuated, and sent 600 trucks to the Spa and Stavelot fuel dumps to move their contents back to railheads, where he arranged with ADSEC for trains to take it away. Over the next three days all but 120,000 US gallons (450,000 L) was evacuated; this was burned to form a roadblock. The German Kampfgruppe Peiper captured 50,000 US gallons (190,000 L) of fuel at Honsfeld, and a fuel dump near Malmedy was set on fire by American troops to prevent its capture, with the loss of 124,000 US gallons (470,000 L), but a nearby dump containing 2,000,000 US gallons (7,600,000 L) was evacuated without loss. By the end of December, the First Army's stocks of POL had dropped from nearly 3,500,000 US gallons (13,000,000 L) to less than 400,000 US gallons (1,500,000 L). Some 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of Class II and IV supplies were evacuated from the supply depot at Eupen and the ration depot at Welkenraedt. Attempts were made to keep the ammunition supply points open as long as possible, and two were overrun. The main ordnance depot was evacuated, as were the hospitals around Malmedy and the engineer stores at Elsenborn, but the map depot at Stevelot was lost. Stocks of Bailey bridge equipment were too large to remove, but were rendered inoperable by removing key components. At the ammunition dumps, first priority for possible destruction was accorded to the highly secret proximity fuzes. The ADSEC fuel depots around Liege came under attack from V-1 flying bombs. A V-1 attack on 17 December started fires that resulted in the loss of 400,000 US gallons (1,500,000 L). German Ar 234 jet bombers attacked Liege on 24 December. Shipments to Liege were halted, and trains hauling bulk fuel were halted at Charleroi, where the fuel was decanted. Once the operational situation was stabilized, the logistical one returned to normal in February 1945. ## Solid fuels Coal was required for many military purposes, mainly for coal-burning locomotives, but also for heating hospitals and barracks, cooking, roasting coffee, and providing hot water for baths and laundries. Coal differed from other supplies in that all of it came from the UK or was procured on the continent. In preparation for operations in Northwest Europe, 14,000 long tons (14,000 t) of coal in sacks and 855 long tons (869 t) of bulk coal were set aside for use in the first six weeks. Thereafter coal would be supplied only in bulk. The first sacks of coal arrived in July, three weeks later than planned, and demand was higher than expected due to the requirement to provide coal for public utilities in Cherbourg and later Paris. The advance beyond the Seine and the consequent rapid expansion of the railway network, early liberation of Paris, and the onset of cold weather in September greatly increased the demand for coal, but receipts fell well short of demand. Storms in the first five days of September delayed shipping from the UK and no coal was unloaded. Cherbourg was unable to handle the planned 2,500 long tons (2,500 t) per month due to a shortage of appropriate railway cars, Granville did not open until the end of September, and a shortage of suitable coasters limited the use of the minor ports for coal traffic. It had been anticipated that the retreating Germans would destroy the coal mines, as they had done in World War I, but the coalfields were overrun before this could occur. A September survey by the SHAEF Solid Fuels Section found 980,000 long tons (1,000,000 t) in above-ground stockpiles, 15,000 long tons (15,000 t) in loaded railroad cars, and 98,000 long tons (100,000 t) on barges that were landlocked due to canal obstructions, but only some 98,000 long tons (100,000 t) of this was of the type suitable for use in locomotives or coal gas generating plants. Eisenhower directed the SHAEF missions to France, Belgium and the Netherlands to negotiate for coal supplies under Reverse Lend-Lease. The Solid Fuels sections of SHAEF's G-4 (logistics) and G-5 (civil affairs) branches were combined, and the section swelled to over 400 Allied personnel. In November, the British agreed to ship another 25,000 long tons (25,000 t) of coal from the UK. The stoves and water heaters in the combat zone were designed to burn liquid fuel, so the major user was the Communications Zone. Nonetheless, the monthly requirement of the 12th Army Group and the Ninth Air Force in the winter of 1944–1945 was 81,000 long tons (82,000 t). Deliveries fell well short of this; the Third Army was allocated 18,000 long tons (18,000 t) per month, but received only 8,166 long tons (8,297 t) in December. Where possible, wood was substituted for coal. The French allocated 372,500 cords (1,350,000 m³) of cut timber for American use, but this proved insufficient. A procurement and woodcutting program was instituted, but in January 1945 firewood production was only 36,000 cords (130,000 m³) against requirements for 1,000,000 cords (3,600,000 m³). This did address the main bottleneck in local coal production, the shortage of wooden pit props. By the end of 1945, 63,400 cords (230,000 m³) of pit props had been produced. ## Outcome The decision to continue the pursuit of the retreating German army beyond the Seine strained the American logistical system to its limits, and until the port of Antwerp was opened on 28 November 1944 no permanent logistical structure could be established. Priority was given to the immediate needs of the operational units, first fuel and then ammunition, sometimes at the expense of items needed in the longer term, such as winter clothing and spare parts. The logistical system faltered, adversely impacting combat operations, but it did not collapse. Innovation at every level of command worked around the supply difficulties until the transportation issues were resolved. The US Army demonstrated its ability to learn from its own experiences and to adapt to changing circumstances. After the war an ETO board chaired by Lord concluded that many of the problems encountered during the Siegfried Line campaign in October and November could have been anticipated, and time was lost as increasingly higher echelons responded and developed solutions. By 1945, the logistical difficulties had been overcome, and supply losses in the fighting in the Ardennes, while severe, were soon made good.

Weymouth, Dorset

Town in Dorset, England

Weymouth (/ˈweɪməθ/ WAY-məth) is a sea-side town and civil parish in the Dorset district, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, on the English Channel coast of England. Situated on a sheltered bay at the mouth of the River Wey, 11 km (7 mi) south of the county town of Dorchester, Weymouth had a population of 53,427 in 2021. It is the third-largest settlement in Dorset after Bournemouth and Poole. The greater Weymouth urban area has a population of 72,802. The history of the town stretches back to the 12th century and includes roles in the spread of the Black Death, the settlement of the Americas and the development of Georgian architecture. It was a major departure point for the Normandy Landings during World War II. Prior to local government reorganisation in April 2019, Weymouth formed a borough with the neighbouring Isle of Portland. Since then the area has been governed by Dorset Council. Weymouth, Portland and the Purbeck district are in the South Dorset parliamentary constituency. A seaside resort, Weymouth and its economy depend on tourism. Visitors are attracted by its harbour and position, approximately halfway along the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site, important for its geology and landforms. Once a port for cross-channel ferries, Weymouth Harbour is now home to a commercial fishing fleet, pleasure boats and private yachts, while nearby Portland Harbour is the location of the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, where the sailing events of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games were held. ## History ### Early days The modern town of Weymouth originated as the two settlements of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, on opposite sides of Weymouth Harbour in Dorset. The older of the two, on the south side, was referred to as Weymouth as early as the 10th century, as part of the parish of Wyke Regis, and by 1252 had become a chartered borough and established seaport, trading in imported wine. Melcombe Regis, on the north side, was first noted in the 11th century. It developed separately from the mid 12th century onwards and in 1310 was a licensed wool port. But French raiders found the port so accessible that in 1433 the staple was transferred to Poole. Melcombe Regis is thought to be the first port at which the Black Death came into England in June or July 1348, possibly aboard either a spice ship or an army ship from Calais, where fighting was taking place in the Hundred Years' War. In their early history, the two towns were rivals for trade and industry, and many arguments broke out over use of the harbour. In 1571, Queen Elizabeth I became so tired of the petitioning that she united the two towns in an Act of Parliament, to form a double borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. Both towns have become known as Weymouth, despite Melcombe Regis being the main centre. The villages of Upwey, Broadwey, Preston, Wyke Regis, Chickerell, Southill, Radipole and Littlemoor have since become part of the built-up area. King Henry VIII had two Device Forts built to protect the south Dorset coast from invasion in the 1530s: Sandsfoot Castle in Wyke Regis and Portland Castle in Castletown. Coastal erosion forced the abandonment of Sandsfoot as early as 1665 and parts have since fallen into the sea. In 1635, around 100 emigrants from the town crossed the Atlantic Ocean on board the ship Charity and settled in Weymouth, Massachusetts. More townspeople emigrated to the Americas to bolster the population of Weymouth, Nova Scotia and Salem, Massachusetts; then called Naumking. ### Civil war During the English Civil War, control of Weymouth changed a number of times and the town was much damaged as a result. When conflict first broke out in 1642, Weymouth was peacefully occupied by Parliamentarians, but it was captured in August the following year by 2,000 Royalist cavalry and held until June 1644, when it was retaken. Around 250 people were killed in the local Crabchurch Conspiracy when sympathetic residents let Royalist soldiers into the town in February 1645. It was recaptured later that month and remained in Parliamentarian hands for the remainder of the war, despite enduring a protracted siege. ### George III The resort is among the first modern tourist destinations, after King George III's brother, the Duke of Gloucester, constructed an English country house named Gloucester Lodge there; the Duke spent the winter of 1780 at the house. George III made Weymouth his summer holiday residence on fourteen occasions between 1789 and 1805, even venturing into the sea in a bathing machine. In celebration of the king's patronage, in 1810, a painted statue was built on the seafront. Known simply as the King's Statue, it was extensively renovated in 2007–08. A second tribute to George III, completed two years earlier in 1808, is the mounted white horse at Osmington. Designed by local architect James Hamilton, and cut into the chalk hillside by soldiers under his direction, the figure measures 280 ft (85 m) long by 323 ft (98 m) high. ### 19th century During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Weymouth started to gain some military importance: in 1795, the Red Barracks were constructed for cavalry troops stationed at Nothe. They were badly damaged in 1798 by a fire and work started on new buildings and a parade ground at Radipole. These premises could house 953 officers and men together with 986 horses. The Red Barracks were rebuilt in 1801 and given over to infantry. Militarisation of the town continued through the Victorian era, with work starting on Portland Harbour in 1849. Built specifically to accommodate the new steam navy, the project was completed in 1872. Between 1860 and 1872, Nothe Fort was constructed at the entrance of Weymouth Harbour, overlooking the new harbour at Portland. Weymouth's popularity, both as a trading port and as a holiday destination, also grew in this period and the arrival of the railway in 1857 boosted both industries. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution stationed a lifeboat at Weymouth for the first time on 26 January 1869. A boathouse was built with a slipway by the harbour and is still in use, although the lifeboat is now moored at a pontoon. In 1887, to mark the 50th year of Queen Victoria's reign, a multi-coloured Jubilee Clock was erected on the esplanade. ### Modern times During World War I, about 120,000 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps personnel convalesced in Weymouth after being injured at Gallipoli or other theatres of the war; the existing army camps and mild climate made it an ideal location. Most of the soldiers were repatriated in 1919; some stayed and married local women. Weymouth's military importance made it a target for German bombing during World War II. The air raids destroyed 1,200 civilian dwellings and killed 76 civilians, and the high street was so badly damaged that much of it had to be demolished after the war. In September 1942 the first full-scale testing of the bouncing bomb was carried out west of the town, on the lagoon behind Chesil Bank. Tens of thousands of Allied troops departed Weymouth and Portland for D-Day, bound for Omaha in Normandy. By the time the conflict in Europe had ended, 517,816 troops and 144,903 vehicles had been through the ports. The immediate aftermath of the war was a difficult time for Weymouth which, in common with other seaside resorts, was not seen as a priority for government investment. In 1960, Southampton stopped services to the Channel Islands, leaving Weymouth as the UK's major link with the islands. A linkspan constructed in 1972 and the introduction of a passenger service to Cherbourg in 1974 helped to further revive the town's fortunes. During the 1970s, cheap package holidays abroad caused a reduction in the town's tourist trade, and harbour trade also suffered a decline; but the number of ferry passengers continued to rise and in 1980 a new terminal with improved facilities was built. From 1990, the demand for bigger vessels forced the cross-channel ferry operators to transfer to larger ports, such as Poole; the last ferry left Weymouth in 2015. ## Governance and politics The district of Weymouth and Portland was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, and merged the borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis and the nearby Portland urban district. Under the local government reforms on 1 April 2019, the district was abolished, and Weymouth is now administered by Dorset Council at the highest tier, and Weymouth Town Council (successor to the district council) at the lowest tier. Weymouth, Portland and the Purbeck district are in the South Dorset parliamentary constituency which elects one Member of Parliament: since 2019, Richard Drax (Conservative). Dorset South was the most marginal Labour seat in the 2001 general election, won by 153 votes. Jim Knight was expecting to have a difficult 2005 election, yet he won with a margin of 1,812 votes—this was in contrast to other areas, where Labour suffered a decline in popularity. This was helped by a high-profile anti-Conservative campaign by musician Billy Bragg. The seat was gained from Labour by Richard Drax for the Conservatives at the 2010 General Election, and held by him in 2015 2017 and 2019. Weymouth and Portland have been twinned with the town of Holzwickede in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany since 1986, and the French town of Louviers, in the department of Eure in Normandy, since 1959. ## Geography Weymouth is built on weak sand and clay rock which in most places along the Dorset coast, except for narrow bands at Lulworth Cove, Swanage and Durdle Door, has been eroded and transported away. This weak rock has been protected at Weymouth by Chesil Beach and the strong limestone Isle of Portland that lies offshore, 3 km (2 mi) south of Wyke Regis. The island affects the tides of the area, producing a double low tide in Weymouth Bay and Portland Harbour. The maximum tidal range is small, at around 2 m (7 ft). There are two lakes in the borough, both designated Nature Reserves by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)–Radipole Lake in the town centre, and Lodmoor between the town centre and Preston. Radipole Lake, the largest nature reserve, and mouth of the River Wey before it flows into Weymouth Harbour, are important habitats for fish and migratory birds, and over 200 species of plants. Radipole is an important tourist attraction; it and Weymouth Beach are situated very close to the main town centre. There are 11 Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the borough, which cover an area of 1,979 acres (801 ha), and there are 37 other Nature Conservation Designations. Situated approximately midway, Weymouth is a gateway town to the Jurassic Coast. The 155 km (96 mi) of the Dorset and east Devon coast is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Site which is important for its geology and landforms. The South West Coast Path has two routes around Weymouth and Portland—one around its coast, and one along the South Dorset Downs, which reduces the path's length by 31.0 km (19.3 mi). The steep ridge of chalk, locally known as The Ridgeway, separates Dorchester and Weymouth. Weymouth is the largest town in the area, larger than the county town of Dorchester, which lies 11 km (7 mi) to the north, and hence is a centre of activity for the nearby population. Weymouth's esplanade is composed of Georgian terraces, which have been converted into apartments, shops, hotels and guest houses. The buildings were constructed in the Georgian and Regency periods between 1770 and 1855, designed by architects such as James Hamilton, and were commissioned by wealthy businessmen. These terraces form a long, continuous arc of buildings which face Weymouth Bay along the esplanade, which is home to statues of Victoria, George III and Sir Henry Edwards, Member of Parliament for the borough from 1867 to 1885, and two war memorials. In the centre of the town lies Weymouth Harbour, separating the two areas of Melcombe Regis (the main town centre) and Weymouth (the southern harbourside) from each other. Since the 18th century they have been linked by successive bridges over the narrowest part of the harbour. The present Town Bridge, built in 1930, is a lifting bascule bridge allowing boats to access the inner harbour. The sand and clay on which Weymouth is built is very low-lying—large areas are below sea level, which allowed the eastern areas of the town to flood during extreme low pressure storms. In the 1980s and 1990s a sea wall was built around Weymouth Harbour and along the coast road in Preston; a rip rap groyne in Greenhill and beach nourishment up to Preston have created a wide and artificially graded pebble beach, to ensure that the low-lying land around Lodmoor does not flood. The defences at Preston, the extended ferry terminal and the widening of the esplanade have changed the sediment regime in Weymouth Bay, narrowing the beach at Greenhill and widening the sands in Weymouth. A study conducted as part of the redevelopment of the Pavilion complex showed that the proposed marina will contribute slightly to this effect, but sand dredged out of the marina could be used to make the beach up to 40 m (130 ft) wider. ### Climate Due to its location on the south-west coast of England, Weymouth has a temperate climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb), with a small variation in daily and annual temperatures. The average annual mean temperature from 1991 to 2020 was 11.6 °C (52.9 °F). The warmest month is August, which has an average temperature range of 14.4 to 20.3 °C (57.9 to 68.5 °F), and the coolest is February, which has a range of 4.1 to 8.9 °C (39.4 to 48.0 °F). Maximum and minimum temperatures throughout the year are above England's average, and Weymouth is in American Horticultural Society (AHS) Heat zone 1. Mean sea surface temperatures range from 7.0 °C (44.6 °F) in February to 17.2 °C (63.0 °F) in August; the annual mean is 11.8 °C (53.2 °F). Days with snow lying are rare: on average zero to five days per year; Most winters have one day or less with snow lying. It may snow or sleet in winter, yet it rarely settles on the ground; low-lying coastal areas on the South Coast of England such as Weymouth experience milder winters than the rest of the United Kingdom. The lowest temperature of −9.8 °C (14.4 °F) was recorded on 13 January 1987. The growing season in Weymouth lasts for more than 310 days per year, and the borough is in Hardiness zone 9b. Weymouth and Portland has one of the sunniest climates in the United Kingdom, along with many south coast towns. The resort averaged 1904.4 hours of sunshine annually between 1991 and 2020, which is 44% of the maximum possible, and 42% above the United Kingdom average of 1402.7 hours. December is the cloudiest month (64.5 hours of sunshine), November the wettest (98.7 mm (3.9 in) of rain) and July is the sunniest and driest month (245.6 hours of sunshine, 40.7 mm (1.6 in) of rain). Sunshine totals in all months are well above the United Kingdom average, and monthly rainfall totals throughout the year are less than the UK average, particularly in summer; this summer minimum of rainfall is not experienced away from the south coast of England. The average annual rainfall of 770.4 mm (30.3 in) is well below the UK average of 1,163.0 mm (45.8 in). ## Demography The mid-year population of Weymouth in 2018 was 53,068, making it the largest settlement in rural Dorset and third largest overall, after Bournemouth and Poole. A built-up area of 18.5 km² (4,600 acres), gives the town a population density of 2,868 people per square kilometre, in 26,747 dwellings. The number of residents has grown steadily since the 1970s and there is an above average number of residents aged 60–84 (27.4%); however, this is less than the Dorset average of 30.2%, and the proportion of those between 18 and 59 is also above the Dorset average. The population is 95.2% White British, slightly below the Dorset average of 95.6%, and well above the England and Wales average of 80.5%. The most common religious identity in Weymouth and Portland is Christianity, at 61.0%, which is slightly above the England and Wales average of 59.3%. The next-largest group is those with no religion, at 29.3%, slightly above the average of 25.1%. ## Economy Tourism is important to the local economy, employing 17% of the local workforce. In 2019, over two million day trips and 469,600 longer stays, brought £209,560,000 of visitors money into the Weymouth and Portland area. Weymouth's coast and beaches, lakes, museums, aquarium, and two shopping centres are the main attractions for visitors. The visitor accommodation consists of hotels on the seafront, guest houses around the town centre, and caravan and camping sites just out of town, including three sites owned by Haven and British Holidays: Littlesea, Seaview and Weymouth Bay. In 2019 there were 2,160 business units in the Weymouth and Portland area, employing 18,000 local residents. The largest sector was Wholesale, Retail and Repair at 17.66% of all local businesses. Construction and Accommodation and food services were the next two largest sectors with a 13.66% share each. Most businesses, 83.1%, had less than nine employees while only 0.5% were large, employing over 250 staff. Two of the area's largest employers are the aerospace parts manufacturer, FGP systems, and the retail clothing firm, New Look. Weymouth Harbour is long and narrow, and formed the estuary of the River Wey until the building of a dam in 1872, which separated the harbour's backwaters from Radipole Lake. For centuries the harbour was a passenger terminal and trade and cargo port: goods handled included wool and spices, and in the 20th century, fertiliser and cars. Cross-Channel ferry services ceased in 2015 but the harbour is still a working port with docks, unloading areas and a fishing fleet, which in 2004 had 82 boats, catching the largest mass of fish in England and the third largest in the United Kingdom. Fishing and cargo trading employ fewer people in the area since their peak in earlier centuries, the commercial fishing fleet has been reduced to 32 vessels but, together with the charter boats, was still worth £4 million per annum in 2018. Local boats offer fishing and diving trips, pleasure cruises along the Jurassic Coast, and thrill-rides to the Isle of Portland. The main shopping centre in the area is in Melcombe Regis, consisting of two pedestrianised streets (St. Thomas's and St. Mary's Street), shops along the esplanade, and a new precinct stretching from St. Thomas's Street to the harbourside, built in the 1990s. There are shops and restaurants in the pedestrianised Hope Square and Brewers Quay, which are linked to the town centre by town bridge and a small passenger ferry service across the harbour. In 2005 the town centre had 292 shops and 37,500 m² (404,000 sq ft) of floorspace, and there was 0.4 km² (100 acres) of industrial estate in the area. Weymouth, Portland and Chickerell have been a Fairtrade Zone since 2007 and in May 2013 local businesses voted in favour of creating the Weymouth Business Improvement District (BID). Like other BIDs located around the UK, it is a business-led initiative supported by Government legislation that enables the local businesses to raise funding to improve the trading environment. The town has undergone considerable regeneration, much of it in anticipation of 2012 Summer Olympics. Work began in 2007 on improvements to the esplanade: a public square was constructed around the restored statue of King George III, the Art Deco, a tourist information centre and café was built (2020), along with repairs and painting to existing Victorian-style shelters and new cafe seasonal kiosks, a beach rescue centre (2020), and a sand art pavilion for the sculptures of Mark Anderson. Other alterations to the promenade were made, particularly around key areas such as the Jubilee Clock and the pier bandstand, with the introduction of new cafes and bars, improved lighting and seating areas with planting, fountains and trees. Figures released by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, in 2014 and 2019, suggested that the ex-borough of Weymouth and Portland was in the top 10% of the most deprived districts in the UK. Central Weymouth and the Littlemoor estate were the town's worst areas. Although unemployment is relatively low, at just over 4%, much of the work is seasonal, part time, and low paid. A Government initiative to help reinvigorate seaside economies was announced in 2015 and in 2019, Weymouth was awarded £3.79 million from the Coastal Communities Fund. The money will help with refurbishment of the area around the town's quay; first proposed in 2006, the plans were abandoned in favour of other works prior to the 2012 Olympics. In addition to beautification and better access, aimed at attracting visitors, there will be improved facilities for fishermen, including secure compounds for equipment and increased cold storage for catches. The town was voted Number 1 in The Times and Sunday Times Best UK Beaches 2023. ## Culture and community There are over two hundred events held throughout the year in the borough, including firework festivals, dragon boat racing, beach volleyball, and motocross, and the annual carnival in mid-August. Weymouth is the only port in the world to have hosted the start of The Tall Ships' Races three times—in 1983, 1987 and 1994; the 1994 race attracting 300,000 spectators. The Pavilion Theatre was built in 1960 on a peninsula of reclaimed land between the harbour and the esplanade, after the Ritz Theatre was destroyed by fire in 1954. The Pavilion was owned and operated by Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, providing a venue for local community groups and schools, and hosting seasonal 'end-of-the-pier' entertainment and year-round shows and events. A failed proposal to regenerate the area in 2006, led the council to announce the demolition of the theatre and on 31 May 2013, it closed but following a formal tender process, the theatre was leased to a local businessman and reopened on 13 July 2013. Weymouth Pavilion is now operated by Weymouth Pavilion CIC as a not-for-profit organisation. The town has both a general and a specialist museum. Weymouth Museum, located in the older part of the town, is situated in a former brewery. The Victorian building is a Grade II listed building and contains artefacts from the Roman, Tudor and Georgian periods, which relate to the town and its surrounding area, including a collection of historic maps and documents. Nothe Fort was an operational coastal fort from 1872 to 1956. It is now a museum dedicated to its own history and that of coastal defence. Sited on the same promontory as the fort are Nothe Gardens, an informal garden of trees and established shrubberies. A large expanse of grass is a popular place for ball games and picnics while other areas are used for a nature trail and orienteering. Orienteering also takes place at Lodmoor Country Park, which is close to the town centre and also the venue for a weekly 5 km fun run. Other facilities include an outdoor gym and children's play park. Adjacent is the RSPB salt marsh nature reserve. More formal gardens, in and around the town, include Radipole Park and Greenhill gardens. Weymouth's Sea Life centre, a zoo and adventure park on the outskirts of the town, has over 1,000 examples of aquatic and semi-aquatic life, including sharks, turtles, otters, frogs and penguins. The centre takes part in an extensive breeding programme and also helps protect marine environments across the world through its partnership with the Sea Life Trust. ## Transport Weymouth railway station is the terminus of a route from London Waterloo, and a route from Westbury, Bristol and Gloucester. A station that handled summer tourist traffic was demolished in 1986 after this traffic declined. A smaller station took up part of the site and the rest was given over to commercial development. Services to London Waterloo began running every 30 minutes from December 2007, but services through Bristol to Cardiff were reduced. An unusual feature of the railways in Weymouth was that, until 1987, main line trains ran through the streets and along the Weymouth Harbour Tramway to the Quay station at the eastern end of the harbour, to connect with ferries to mainland Europe. Due to declining business, goods traffic ceased in 1972 but passenger services continued until 1987. The line officially closed in 2016 and, in 2020, work began on its removal. Local bus services are provided by First Bus Wessex. Routes run from Weymouth to the Isle of Portland, Dorchester, Poole, Wool, Beaminster, Axminster, and to other villages and the town's holiday parks. Weymouth is connected to towns and villages along the Jurassic Coast by route X53, which runs from Axminster to Weymouth, through Lyme Regis, Charmouth, Bridport and Abbotsbury. In addition, More Buses operate a summer only service to Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove, Wool, Dorchester, Wareham and Swanage. The A354 road connects the town to the A35 trunk road in Dorchester and terminates at Easton on the Isle of Portland. The A353 road runs east from Weymouth to the south of Warmwell, where it connects with the A352 to the Isle of Purbeck and Wareham. The B3157 road runs west from Weymouth to the south of Bridport, where it terminates and connects to the A35. Weymouth is approximately 52 miles (83 km) south-east of the M5 motorway at junction 25 for Taunton and the same distance from junction 1 of the M27 motorway to the east. On 5 April 2007, Dorset County Council granted planning permission for a single carriageway relief road, running 7 km (4 mi) north, and a 1000-space park-and-ride scheme, costing £84.5 million. Work commenced in 2008; and was completed by mid-2011. During archaeological excavations carried out in advance of the relief road construction, a burial pit containing 51 dismembered skeletons of Viking men was discovered on Ridgeway Hill. The park and ride operated significantly below capacity and, in October 2015, the council announced it would close the facility over the winter to reduce costs. Route 26 of the National Cycle Network runs through Weymouth. The South West Coastal Path National Trail and the Hardy Way long distance footpath pass through Weymouth. ## Education Weymouth has 14 primary schools and three secondary schools. All three secondary schools—All Saints Church of England Academy in Wyke Regis; Budmouth Academy in Chickerell; and Wey Valley Academy in Broadwey—converted to academies following poor Ofsted reports. Wey Valley was added to the Government's Failing Schools list in 2007 when only 27% of the students achieved 5 A\*to C passes. After consistently failing to improve, the school closed on 1 May 2019. It reopened on 1 June 2019. In 2018, All Saints' had 830 students on roll, Budmouth had 1548 and Wey Valley 863. In 2019, 35% of students at All Saints', 36% of students at Budmouth and 21% of students at Wey Valley, attained five or more A\*to C GCSEs including English and mathematics; below the national average of 43%. From 2016, schools in England have been measured on their pupils progress rather than GCSE results with greater emphasis placed on advancement in English and mathematics. Progress 8 scores, for all three schools, were below average, in 2019. Budmouth Academy also has a sixth form centre which had 257 students in 2018, the vast majority of which were studying for A-Level. Vocational and occupational courses are also offered. Weymouth College in Melcombe Regis is a further education college which, in 2020, had around 3,000 students from South West England and overseas. Part of The University of Plymouth Colleges Network, the college offers a wide range of practical and academic courses in many subjects, ranging from apprenticeship courses to full and part-time university level courses. There are three special schools for children of all ages: Arbour House School, Wyvern Academy and Westfield Arts College. The 2011 UK Census recorded that 77.5% of Weymouth and Portland residents over 16 have qualifications, which is slightly above the UK national average of 76.8%; about 22.5% of adult residents have a higher than Level 4 qualification which is lower than the UK average of 27%. ## Sport and recreation Weymouth's sandy beach and shallow waters are used for swimming and sunbathing during the tourist season, and for beach sport events throughout the year, including beach motocross, the International handball championships and the beach volleyball classic. The international kite festival, held in May each year on Weymouth Beach, has attracted around 40,000 spectators to the esplanade from around the world. Weymouth has two sports centres, one shared by the college and local community, comprising two fitness suites and a large sports hall; the other, Redlands community sports hub, has both indoor and outdoor facilities with pitches for football and cricket. The latter is home to Weymouth Cricket Club, which is sponsored by local business and runs in partnership with nearby schools. The local football club, Weymouth F.C. or 'the Terras', are outside the Football League but, in common with some other non-league clubs, they became professional in 2005, The team have enjoyed some success; twice playing in the third round of the FA Cup, the highest club competition level. At the end of the 2005–06 season the team were promoted as champions to the National League for the first time since 1989. Since relegated, as of 2020, they are in the National League South. The Terras' ground is the Bob Lucas Stadium; its record attendance is 6,500 against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup 2005–2006 season. Until 2010 Motorcycle speedway racing was staged adjacent to the stadium; the club closed following disputes with the landlords and the team, the Wildcats, relocated to Poole. On the shores of Portland Harbour, 3 km (2 mi) south of Wyke Regis, is Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, where the sailing events of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were based. The pre-existing venue was a major consideration in its selection. As part of the South West of England Regional Development Agency's plans to redevelop the area around the academy, a new 600-berth marina and an extension with more on-site facilities was built. Weymouth and Portland were one of the first locations in the United Kingdom to finish building a venue for the Olympic Games, as construction started in October 2007 and finished at the end of 2008. The waters of Weymouth and Portland are credited by the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) as some of the best in Europe for sailing. Local, national and international sailing events are regularly held in the bay; these include the J/24 World Championships in 2005, trials for the 2004 Athens Olympics, the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) World Championship 2006, the 2015 ISAF Sailing World Cup, the SAP 505 World Championship in 2016 and the 2019 World Championship for International A-class catamarans. Weymouth Bay is a venue for other water-sports—the reliable wind is favourable for wind and kitesurfing. The sheltered waters in Portland Harbour and near Weymouth are used for angling, diving to shipwrecks, snorkelling, canoeing, jet skiing, water skiing, and swimming. ## Media BBC local news comes from Spotlight in Plymouth and ITV West Country in Bristol is the local ITV television franchise. Television is received from the Stockland Hill transmitter or from one of its three relay transmitters in the town (Wyke Regis, Bincombe Hill and Preston). Reception is also possible in some areas from the Rowridge transmitter meaning the town is also covered by local news from BBC South Today in Southampton and ITV Meridian. BBC South region is also the default BBC One variant given to Weymouth postcodes on satellite television and ITV Meridian is the default HD variant of ITV received from the Wyke Regis, Bincombe Hill and Preston relay transmitters. The local newspaper is the Dorset Echo. Weymouth has been used as a location in both film and television, particularly the esplanade which features prominently in the 1958 film The Key, the 1967 version of Far from the Madding Crowd, and the 1963 Hammer Horror production The Damned. Scenes for the 1965 wartime adventure film The Heroes of Telemark were shot in the bay. Other war films filmed in areas in and around the town are The Dam Busters (1954) and the 2017 adaptation of Dunkirk. Appearances on television include the 1980s detective series Rockliffe's Follies, where Weymouth was the setting for the fictional town of Maidenport. Some scenes from the series Broadchurch were filmed there in 2014 and in 2008, the town was the subject of an episode of the BBC soap opera EastEnders. ## Notable people ### Writers Notable writers are associated with Weymouth and the area has influenced, and appears in, their work. Before he was a published author, Thomas Hardy worked for a Weymouth-based architect and he visited and stayed in the town on a number of occasions between 1869 and 1872. The novel Under the Greenwood Tree was partially written there. Many of his other works incorporate features of the town and surrounding area: in The Return of the Native, one character describes Weymouth as a place where, "out of every ten folk you meet nine of 'em in love". The esplanade, Gloucester Lodge Hotel and Old Rooms feature in Hardy's The Trumpet-Major (1880); the town was renamed "Budmouth" in the 1895 edition, to bring the novel within fictional 'Wessex', and Chesil Bank is referred to in The Well-Beloved (1897). John Cowper Powys's novel Weymouth Sands (1934) is set in Weymouth, where the writer "...was more at home than anywhere else in the world". Powys's paternal grandmother lived in Weymouth and the family lived in nearby Dorchester from 1880 to 1885. When Powys died in 1963, he was cremated and his ashes dispersed on the water around Chesil Bank. Joseph Drew, businessman and owner of the local newspaper The Southern Times, lived and worked in Weymouth. He wrote the historical novel The Poisoned Cup, "a quaint tale of old Weymouth and Sandsfoot Castle" in 1876. The novelist Gerald Basil Edwards spent the last years of his life in Weymouth. In nearby Upwey, he met the art student Edward Chaney, who encouraged him to complete The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. ### Others The architect Sir Christopher Wren was the Member of Parliament for Weymouth in 1702, and controlled nearby Portland's quarries from 1675 to 1717. He designed St Paul's Cathedral and had it built from the famous Portland stone. The famous artist, Sir James Thornhill was chosen to decorate the interior. He was born in Weymouth at the White Hart public house in Melcombe Regis and also served as the town's MP, in 1722. When HMS Marlborough sailed into Algeciras Bay in April 1781, to relieve Gibraltar during the Great Siege, she was carrying aboard two natives of Weymouth: the captain, Taylor Penny and a midshipman called Joseph Spear. They were both still aboard in 1782, when Marlborough led the line at the Battle of the Saintes. Taylor became mayor of Weymouth in 1785 while Spear went on to become a Royal Navy captain in 1809, commanding HMS Royal Sovereign and HMS Temeraire. Thomas Fowell Buxton, a social reformer and abolitionist, was Weymouth's MP from 1818 to 1835. Buxton was the leader of the slavery abolition movement in the British House of Commons after William Wilberforce retired in 1825. The town's main route to the Isle of Portland is named after him. It runs past Belfield House, his former Weymouth home. ## See also - List of people from Weymouth - 2012 Summer Olympic venues - List of Dorset beaches - List of churches in Weymouth and Portland - List of places in Dorset - UK coastline ## References and notes

Robert Catesby

English conspirator

Robert Catesby (c. 1572 – 8 November 1605) was the leader of a group of English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Warwickshire, Catesby was educated at Oxford University. His family were prominent recusant Catholics, and presumably to avoid swearing the Oath of Supremacy he left college before taking his degree. He married a Protestant in 1593 and fathered two children, one of whom survived birth and was baptised in a Protestant church. In 1601 he took part in the Essex Rebellion but was captured and fined, after which he sold his estate at Chastleton. The Protestant James I, who became King of England in 1603, was less tolerant of Catholics than many persecuted Recusants had hoped. Catesby therefore planned a decapitation strike which he considered tyrannicide, aimed at the Government of England; by blowing up the King and the House of Lords with gunpowder during the State Opening of Parliament. The assassination of the King was to be the prelude to a popular uprising aimed at regime change, through which a Catholic monarch would be seated upon the English throne. Early in 1604, Catesby began to recruit other Catholics to his cause, including Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes. Over the following months, Fawkes helped to recruit a further eight conspirators into the plot, which, against the pleas of underground Jesuit Superior Fr. Henry Garnet to cancel the plot, was scheduled to be carried out on 5 November 1605. Concerns about possible collateral damage caused an anonymous letter of warning to be sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, who alerted the authorities. On the night before the planned explosion, Fawkes was arrested underneath the House of Parliament while guarding 38 barrels of gunpowder. News of his arrest caused the other plotters to flee London, warning Catesby along their way. With a much-diminished group of followers, Catesby made a last stand at Holbeche House in Staffordshire (the modern-day Kingswinford suburb of Wall Heath), against a 200-strong Sheriff's posse led by Richard Walsh. Catesby was mortally wounded by gunfire and later found dead inside Holbeche Hall, while contemplating a holy card of the Virgin Mary. As a warning to other potential regicides, Catesby's body was re-exhumed, posthumously executed, and his severed head on a spike was displayed outside the House of Parliament. ## Early life ### Origins He was born after 1572, the third and only surviving son and heir of Sir William Catesby of Lapworth in Warwickshire, by his wife Anne Throckmorton, a daughter of Sir Robert Throckmorton (c.1513–1581), KG, of Coughton Court in Warwickshire (by his second wife, Elizabeth Hussey). He was a lineal descendant of William Catesby (1450–1485), the influential councillor of King Richard III who was captured at the Battle of Bosworth and executed. His parents were prominent recusant Catholics; his father had suffered years of imprisonment for his faith, and in 1581 had been tried in Star Chamber alongside William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux of Harrowden, and his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Tresham, for harbouring the Jesuit Edmund Campion. The head of the Throckmortons, Sir Thomas Throckmorton, was also fined for his recusancy, and spent many years in prison. Another relation, Sir Francis Throckmorton, had been executed in 1584 for his involvement in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots. ### Education In 1586 Robert was educated at Gloucester Hall in Oxford, a college noted for its Catholic intake. Those either studying at university or wishing to take public office could not do so without first swearing the Oath of Supremacy, an act which would have compromised Catesby's Catholic faith. Presumably to avoid this consequence, he left without taking his degree, and may then have attended the seminary college of Douai. In 1588, at time of the Spanish Armada, Robert was allegedly imprisoned at Wisbech Castle along with Francis Tresham. ### Adulthood In 1593 he married Catherine Leigh, granddaughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire. Catherine came from a wealthy Protestant family and brought with her a dowry of £2,000, but also a religious association that offered Robert some respite from the recusancy laws then in effect. From the death of his grandmother the following year he inherited a property at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire. The couple's first son William died in infancy, but their second son Robert survived, and was baptised at Chastleton's Anglican parish church on 11 November 1595. When Catesby's father died in 1598, his estates at Ashby St Ledgers were left to his wife, while Catesby and his family remained at Chastleton. Catesby had seemed happy to remain a Church Papist but after his wife's death later that year he further embraced Catholicism. In 1601 Catesby was involved in the Essex Rebellion. The Earl of Essex's purpose might have lain in furthering his own interests rather than those of the Catholic Church, but Catesby hoped that if Essex succeeded, there might once more be a Catholic monarch. The rebellion was a failure however, and the wounded Catesby was captured, imprisoned at the Wood Street Counter, and fined 4,000 marks (equivalent to over £6 million as of 2008) by Elizabeth I. Sir Thomas Tresham helped pay some of Catesby's fine, following which Catesby sold his estate at Chastleton. Several authors speculate about Catesby's movements as Elizabeth's health grew worse; he was probably among those "principal papists" imprisoned by a government fearing open rebellion, and in March 1603 he possibly sent Christopher Wright to Spain to see if Philip III would continue to support English Catholics after Elizabeth's death. Catesby funded the activities of some Jesuit priests, and while visiting them made occasional use of the alias Mr Roberts. ## Gunpowder Plot ### Background Catholics had hoped that the persecution they suffered during Elizabeth's reign would end when she was succeeded in 1603 by James I. His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots (executed in 1587), had been a devout Catholic, and James's attitude appeared moderate, even tolerant towards Catholics. Protestant rulers across Europe had, however, been the target of several assassination attempts during the late 16th century, and until the 1620s some English Catholics believed that regicide was justifiable to remove 'tyrants' from power. Much of James's political writing was concerned with such matters, and the "refutation of the [Catholic] argument that 'faith did not need to be kept with heretics'". Shortly after he discovered that his wife Anne – who had been raised Lutheran and had abstained from the Anglican communion at her English coronation – had been sent a rosary from Pope Clement VIII, James exiled all Jesuits and other Catholic priests, and reimposed the collection of anti-Catholic fines. Catesby soon began to lose patience with the new dynasty. British author and historian Antonia Fraser describes Catesby's mentality as "that of the crusader who does not hesitate to employ the sword in the cause of values which he considers are spiritual". Writing after the events of 1604–1606, the Jesuit priest Father Tesimond's description of his friend was favourable: "his countenance was exceedingly noble and expressive ... his conversation and manners were peculiarly attractive and imposing, and that by the dignity of his character he exercised an irresistible influence over the minds of those who associated with him." Fellow conspirator Ambrose Rookwood, shortly before his own death, said that he "loved and respected him [Catesby] as his own life", while Catesby's friend, Father John Gerard, claimed he was "respected in all companies of such as are counted there swordsmen or men of action", and that "few were in the opinions of most men preferred before him and he increased much his acquaintance and friends." Author Mark Nicholls suggests that "bitterness at the failure of Essex's design nevertheless seems to have sharpened an already well-honed neurosis." ### Early stages Despite the ease with which Catesby seems to have inspired his fellow conspirators, that it was he and not Fawkes (today most often associated with 5 November) who devised what became known as the Gunpowder Plot, has largely been forgotten. The precise date on which he set events in motion is unknown, but he first likely had the idea early in 1604. Sometime around June of the previous year he was visited by his friend Thomas Percy. A great-grandson of the 4th Earl of Northumberland, Percy was reported to have had a "wild youth" before he became a Catholic, and during Elizabeth's final years had been entrusted by the 9th Earl with a secret mission to James's court in Scotland, to plead with the king on behalf of England's Catholics. He now complained bitterly about what he considered to be James's treachery and threatened to kill him. Catesby replied, "No, no, Tom, thou shalt not venture to small purpose, but if thou wilt is a traitor thou shalt be to some great advantage." Percy listened while Catesby added, "I am thinking of the surest way and I will soon let thee know what it is." During Allhallowtide on 31 October he sent for his cousin Thomas Wintour, who was at Huddington Court in Worcestershire with his brother Robert. Thomas was educated as a lawyer and had fought for England in the Low Countries, but in 1600 had converted to Catholicism. Following the Earl of Essex's failed rebellion, he had travelled to Spain to raise support for English Catholics, a mission which the authorities would later describe as comprising part of a 'Spanish Treason'. Although Thomas declined his invitation, Catesby again invited him in February the next year. When Wintour responded to the summons he found his cousin with the swordsman John Wright. Catesby told him of his plan to kill the king and his government by blowing up "the Parliament House with Gunpowder ... in that place have they done us all the mischief, and perchance God hath designed that place for their punishment". Wintour at first objected to his cousin's scheme, but Catesby, who said that "the nature of the disease required so sharp a remedy", won him over. Despite Catholic Spain's moves toward diplomacy with England, Catesby still harboured hopes of foreign support and a peaceful solution. Wintour, therefore, returned to the continent, where he tried unsuccessfully to persuade the affable Constable of Castile to press for good terms for English Catholics in forthcoming peace negotiations. He then turned to Sir William Stanley, an English Catholic and veteran commander who had switched sides from England to Spain, and the exiled Welsh spy Hugh Owen; both cast doubt on the plotters' chances of receiving Spanish support. Owen did, however, introduce Wintour to Guy Fawkes, whose name Catesby had already supplied as "a confidant gentleman" who might enter their ranks. Fawkes was a devout English Catholic who had travelled to the continent to fight for Spain in the Dutch War of Independence. Wintour told him of their plan to "doe somewhat in England if the pece with Spaine helped us nott", and thus in April 1604 the two men returned home. Wintour told Catesby that despite positive noises from the Spanish, he feared that "the deeds would not answer". This was a response that in Nicholls's opinion came as no surprise to Catesby, who wanted and expected nothing less. On Sunday 20 May in the well-to-do Strand district of London, Catesby met Thomas Wintour, John Wright, Thomas Percy and Guy Fawkes, at an inn called the Duck and Drake. Percy had been introduced to the plot several weeks after Wintour and Fawkes's return to England. Alone in a private room, all swore an oath of secrecy on a prayer book, and then in another room celebrated Mass with the Jesuit priest (and friend to Catesby) John Gerard. Robert Keyes was admitted to the group in October 1604, and was charged with looking after Catesby's Lambeth house, where the gunpowder and other supplies were to be stored. Two months later Catesby recruited his servant, Thomas Bates, into the plot, after the latter accidentally became aware of it, and by March 1605 three more were admitted: Thomas Wintour's brother Robert, John Grant and John Wright's brother Christopher. ### Further recruitment Although the State Opening of Parliament was planned for February 1605, concern over the plague delayed it until 3 October. A contemporaneous government account has the plotters engaged in digging a tunnel beneath Parliament by December 1604, but no other evidence exists to prove this, and no trace of a tunnel has since been found. If the story is true, the plotters ceased their efforts when the tenancy to the undercroft beneath the House of Lords became available. Several months later, early in June 1605, Catesby met the principal Jesuit in England, Father Henry Garnet, on Thames Street in London. While discussing the war in Flanders, Catesby asked about the morality of "killing innocents". Garnet said that such actions could often be excused, but according to his own account during a second meeting in July he showed Catesby a letter from the pope which forbade rebellion. Catesby replied, "Whatever I mean to do, if the Pope knew, he would not hinder for the general good of our country." Father Garnet's protestations prompted Catesby's next reply, "I am not bound to take knowledge by you of the Pope's will." Soon after, Father Tesimond told Father Garnet that while taking Catesby's confession he had learned of the plot. Father Garnet met with Catesby a third time on 24 July at White Webbs in Enfield Chase, the home of Catesby's wealthy relative Anne Vaux, and a house long suspected by the government of harbouring Jesuit priests. Without acknowledging that he was aware of the precise nature of the plot, the priest tried in vain to dissuade Catesby from his course. By 20 July 1605, 36 barrels of gunpowder had been stored in the undercroft, but the ever-present threat of the plague yet again prorogued the opening of Parliament, this time until 5 November 1605. Catesby had borne much of the scheme's financial cost thus far, and was running out of money. As their plans moved closer to fruition, during a secret meeting at Bath in August at which he, Percy and Thomas Wintour were present, the plotters decided that "the company being yet but few" he was to be allowed to "call in whom he thought best". Catesby soon added Ambrose Rookwood, a staunch Catholic who was both young and wealthy, but who most importantly owned a stable of fine horses at Coldham. For the plan to work Rookwood and his horses needed to be close to the other conspirators, and so Catesby persuaded him to rent Clopton House at Stratford-upon-Avon. Francis Tresham was brought into the plot on 14 October. Also descended from William Catesby, Tresham was Robert's cousin, and as young children the two had often visited White Webbs. Although his account of the meeting is weighted with hindsight (when captured he sought to distance himself from the affair), he asked Catesby what support for the Catholics would be forthcoming once the king had been killed. Catesby's answer, "The necessity of the Catholics [was such that] it must needs be done", in Fraser's opinion demonstrates his unwavering view on the matter, held at least since his first meeting with Thomas Wintour early in 1604. The final conspirator to be brought in was Everard Digby, on 21 October, at Harrowden. Catesby confided in Digby during a delayed Feast of Saint Luke. Like Rookwood, Digby was young and wealthy, and possessed a stable of horses. Catesby told him to rent Coughton Court near Alcester, so that he would "the better to be able to do good to the cause [kidnap Princess Elizabeth]". The day after Tresham's recruitment, Catesby exchanged greetings in London with Fawkes's former employer, Lord Montagu, and asked him "The Parliament, I think, brings your lordship up now?" Montagu told him that he was visiting a relative, and that he would be at Parliament in a few weeks' time. Catesby replied "I think your Lordship takes no pleasure to be there". Montague, who had already been imprisoned for speaking out in the House of Lords against anti-Catholic legislation, and who had no inclination to be present while more laws were introduced, agreed. Following the plot's failure he became a suspect and was arrested, but after intense lobbying he was released some months later. The recruitment of Rookwood, Tresham, and Digby coincided with a series of meetings in various taverns across London, during which the last remaining details were worked out. Fawkes would light the fuse, and escape by boat across the Thames. An uprising would start in the Midlands, during which Princess Elizabeth was to be captured. Fawkes would escape to the continent and explain to the Catholic powers what had happened in England. ### Monteagle letter Several of the conspirators expressed worries about fellow Catholics who would be caught up in the planned explosion; Percy was concerned for his patron, Northumberland, and when the young Earl of Arundel's name was mentioned Catesby suggested that a minor wound might keep him from the chamber on that day. Keyes's suggestion to warn the Earl of Peterborough was, however, derided. On 26 October William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle (Tresham's brother-in-law) received an anonymous letter while at his house in Hoxton, warning him not to attend Parliament, and forecasting that "they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament; and yet they shall not see who hurts them". Uncertain of its meaning he delivered it to Secretary of State Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. In an extraordinary act of bravado Catesby had planned to go hunting with James, but was warned of the betrayal by Monteagle's servant. He immediately suspected that Tresham was responsible for the letter, a view which was shared by Thomas Wintour. Together the two confronted the recently recruited conspirator, and threatened to "hang him", but Tresham managed to convince the pair that he had not written the letter, and the next day urged them to abandon the plot. Catesby waited for Percy's return from the north, before making his decision. He thought the letter too vague to constitute any meaningful threat to the plan, and decided to forge ahead. As Fawkes made a final check on the gunpowder, other conspirators took up their positions in the Midlands. Salisbury, already aware of certain stirrings before he received the letter, did not yet know the exact nature of the plot or who exactly was involved. He elected to wait, to see how events unfolded. On 3 November, Catesby met with Wintour and Percy in London. Although the nature of their discussion is unknown, Fraser theorises that some adjustment of their plan to abduct Princess Elizabeth may have occurred, as later accounts told how Percy had been seen at the Duke of York's lodgings, enquiring as to the movements of the king's daughter. Nicholls mentions that a week earlier—on the same day that Monteagle received his letter—Catesby was at White Webbs with Fawkes, to discuss kidnapping Prince Henry rather than Princess Elizabeth. ## Death Late on Monday 4 November, Catesby, John Wright and Bates left for the Midlands, ready for the planned uprising. That night Fawkes was discovered guarding the gunpowder in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords. As news of his arrest spread, the next day most of the conspirators still in London fled. Catesby's party, ignorant of what was happening in London, paused at Dunstable when his horse lost a shoe. When Rookwood caught them up and broke to them the news of Fawkes's arrest, the group, which now included Rookwood, Catesby, Bates, the Wright brothers and Percy, rode toward Dunchurch. At about 6:00 pm that evening they reached Catesby's family home at Ashby St Ledgers, where his mother and Robert Wintour were staying. To keep his mother ignorant of their situation, Catesby sent a message asking Wintour to meet him at the edge of the town. The group continued to Dunchurch, where they met Digby and his hunting party and informed them that the king and Salisbury were dead, thus persuading them to continue with the plan. On 6 November they raided Warwick Castle for supplies, taking cavalry horses from the stables to aid their escape, before continuing to Norbrook to collect stored weapons. From there they continued their journey to Huddington. Catesby gave Bates a letter to deliver to Father Garnet and the other priests at Coughton Court, informing them of what had transpired, and asking for their help in raising an army in Wales, where Catholic support was believed to be strong. The priest begged Catesby and his followers to stop their "wicked actions", and to listen to the pope's preachings. Father Garnet fled, and managed to evade capture for several weeks. Catesby and the others arrived at Huddington at about 2:00 pm, and were met by Thomas Wintour. Terrified of being associated with the fugitives, family members and former friends showed them no sympathy. Back in London, under pain of torture Fawkes had started to reveal what he knew, and on 7 November the government named Catesby as a wanted man. Early that morning at Huddington, the remaining outlaws went to confession, before taking the sacrament—in Fraser's opinion, a sign that none of them thought they had long to live. The party of fugitives, which included those at the centre of the plot, their supporters and Digby's hunting party, by now had dwindled to only thirty-six in number. They continued through pouring rain to Hewell Grange, home of the young Lord Windsor. He was absent however, so they helped themselves to further arms, ammunition, and money. The locals were unsupportive; on hearing that Catesby's party stood for "God and Country", they replied that they were for "King James as well as God and Country". The party reached Holbeche House, on the Staffordshire boundary, at about 10:00 pm. Tired and desperate, they spread in front of the fire some of the now-soaked gunpowder taken from Hewell Grange, to dry out. Although gunpowder does not explode (unless physically contained), a spark from the fire landed on the powder and the resultant flames engulfed Catesby, Rookwood, Grant, and another man. Catesby survived, albeit scorched. Digby left, ostensibly to give himself up, as did John Wintour. Thomas Bates fled, along with Robert Wintour. Remaining were Catesby (described as "reasonably well"), Rookwood, the Wright brothers, Percy and John Grant, who had been so badly injured that his eyes were "burnt out". They resolved to stay in the house and wait for the arrival of the king's men. Catesby, believing his death to be near, kissed the gold crucifix he wore around his neck and said he had given everything for "the honour of the Cross". He refused to be taken prisoner, "against that only he would defend himself with his sword". Richard Walsh, Sheriff of Worcester, and his company of 200 men besieged Holbeche House at about 11:00 am on 8 November. While crossing the courtyard Thomas Wintour was hit in the shoulder. John Wright was shot, followed by his brother, and then Rookwood. Catesby and Percy were reportedly both dropped by a single lucky shot, while standing near the door. Catesby managed to crawl inside the house, where his body was later found, clutching a picture of the Virgin Mary. This and his gold crucifix were sent to London, to demonstrate what "superstitious and Popish idols" had inspired the plotters. The survivors were taken into custody and the dead buried near Holbeche. On the orders of the Earl of Northampton however, the bodies of Catesby and Percy were exhumed and decapitated. John Harington made an opportune study of the heads while en route to London, and later reflected: "more terrible countenances were never looked upon". Placed on "the side of the Parliament House", Catesby's head on a spike became one of the "sightless spectators of their own failure". ## Notable relatives Modern actor and producer Kit Harington is a collateral descendant of Robert Catesby. He, along with co-creators Ronan Bennett and Daniel West, produced a three-part dramatization called Gunpowder with the BBC delving into his ancestor's role as the mastermind of the Gunpowder Plot, with Harington himself starring as Catesby.

Mackensen-class battlecruiser

Class of German battlecruisers

The Mackensen class was the last class of battlecruisers to be built by Germany in World War I. The design initially called for seven ships, but three of them were redesigned as the Ersatz Yorck class. Of the four ships of the Mackensen class, Mackensen, Graf Spee, and Prinz Eitel Friedrich were launched, and Fürst Bismarck was not—but none were completed, after wartime shipbuilding priorities were redirected towards U-boats—and the ships were broken up in the early 1920s. The lead ship of the class was named for August von Mackensen, a prominent military commander during the war. In response to the Mackensen-class ships, the British Royal Navy laid down the Admiral-class battlecruisers, all but one of which would eventually be cancelled; the sole survivor, HMS Hood, was completed after the end of the war. The design of the Mackensens was a much improved version of the previous Derfflinger class. The most significant improvement was a new, more powerful 35 cm (14 in) gun, compared to the 30.5 cm (12 in) gun of the earlier ships. The Mackensen-class ships also featured more powerful engines that gave the ships a higher top speed and a significantly greater cruising range. The Mackensen design provided the basis for the subsequent Ersatz Yorck class, armed with 38 cm (15 in) main-battery guns, after the Battle of Jutland in 1916 made the need for the larger guns clear. ## Design The fourth and final Naval Law, passed in 1912, governed the building program of the German navy during World War I. The Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt) decided the Navy should construct one battleship and one battlecruiser every year between 1913 and 1917, with an additional unit of both types in 1913 and 1916. Design work on the new class began in 1912, with construction intended to begin in the 1914 budget year. The question about the main battery for the new battlecruisers was the most pressing; the previous Derfflinger class was armed with 30.5-centimeter (12 in) guns, though some consideration had been given to redesigning the last two ships—SMS Lützow and Hindenburg—with 35 cm (14 in) guns. The 35 cm guns were heavier than the 30.5 cm guns, and there were problems with enlarging the new ships to accommodate the heavier armament. The Imperial dry docks were deep enough only for ships with a draft of 9 m (30 ft), and simply accepting an increased displacement on the same hull as the Derfflinger class would entail a reduction in speed. This meant that an increase in displacement would necessitate a longer and wider hull to keep any increases in draft minimal and avoid reducing the speed. The constraints on enlarging the hull were compounded by restrictions on width imposed by the locks of the canal in Wilhelmshaven. As a result, Großadmiral (Grand Admiral) Alfred von Tirpitz, the head of the RMA, prohibited a design displacement greater than 30,000 metric tons (29,526 long tons). The initial design was approved on 30 September 1912, though the heads of the General Navy Department—Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Günther von Krosigk and Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Reinhard Scheer—and the Weapons Department head, Vizeadmiral Gerhard Gerdes, had to submit any revisions they deemed were necessary. The design staff suggested using triple or even quadruple gun turrets to keep the displacement under the 30,000-ton limit. Another suggested alternative was to use six 38 cm (15 in) guns in twin turrets, one forward and two aft; Wilhelm II accepted that design on 2 May 1913, though Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, the commander in chief of the High Seas Fleet, preferred the 30.5 cm gun of the Derfflinger-class ships. As a compromise, the new battlecruisers were to be armed with eight 35 cm (13.8 inch) guns. The question of whether the new ships should be powered entirely by oil-fired boilers was less controversial. The design staff was generally in agreement with the standard practice of using coal-fired boilers for two-thirds of the power plant, with the remainder being oil-fired boilers. Coal-fired boilers were preferred because the coal, stored in the sides of the ship, provided additional protection, particularly for the battlecruisers, which carried less armor than their battleship counterparts. The finalized design was approved on 23 May 1914. ### General characteristics The Mackensen-class ships were 223 m (731 ft 8 in) long and had a beam of 30.4 m (99 ft 9 in) and a draft of 9.3 m (30 ft 6 in) forward and 8.4 m (27 ft 7 in) aft. The ships were designed to displace 31,000 t (30,510 long tons) on a standard load, and up to 35,300 t (34,742 long tons) fully laden. The Mackensens' hulls were composed of longitudinal steel frames, over which the outer hull plates were riveted. This was the same type of construction as in the preceding Derfflinger-class battlecruisers, and was intended to save weight compared to the traditional method of construction, which incorporated both longitudinal and transverse frames. The ships' hulls contained 18 watertight compartments and a double bottom that ran for 92 percent of the length of the hull. This was significantly greater than the older Derfflinger-class ships, which had a double bottom for only 65 percent of the length of the hull. Experience with previous battlecruiser designs led to the adoption of a continuous upper deck, which raised the level of the deck aft. This was necessary because the aft decks of earlier designs were usually awash when steaming at high speed, even in calm seas. The ships were also equipped with a bulbous bow to reduce drag on the hull, the first time the feature was used in the German Navy. The ships as designed required a crew of 46 officers and 1,140 enlisted sailors. Service as a squadron flagship would increase that number by an additional 14 officers and 62 sailors. The vessels carried a number of small boats, including two picket boats, one barge, two launches, two cutters, and three yawls. ### Machinery The ships of the Mackensen class were equipped with four sets of marine-type turbine engines, each of which drove a three-bladed screw propeller that was 4.2 m (13 ft 9 in) in diameter. The turbines mounted in Fürst Bismarck were equipped with Föttinger fluid transmission, while those on the other three ships were two sets of direct-coupled turbines with geared transmissions. The ships had 24 coal-fired marine-type single ended boilers and eight oil-fired marine-type boilers. The power plants were designed to provide 90,000 metric horsepower (89,000 shp) and 295 revolutions per minute. Maximum speed was rated at 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph). The ships were equipped with a pair of rudders mounted side by side, as opposed to the tandem rudders used on the Derfflinger-class ships. The ships' turbines were equipped with Föttinger gears, which significantly improved performance at cruising speeds and provided a corresponding increase in range of about 20 percent. The vessels were designed to store 800 t (790 long tons) of coal and 250 t (250 long tons) of oil in purpose-built storage spaces; the hull areas between the torpedo bulkhead and the outer wall of the ship were used to store additional fuel. Maximum fuel capacity was 4,000 t (3,900 long tons) of coal and 2,000 t (2,000 long tons) of oil. This was estimated to give a range of up to about 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi) at a cruising speed of 14 kn (26 km/h; 16 mph). Electrical power on the vessels was provided by eight diesel generators that put out 2,320 kilowatts at 220 volts. ### Armament The Mackensens were equipped with a main battery of eight new 35 cm SK L/45 guns in four twin gun turrets. The turrets were mounted in superfiring pairs fore and aft of the main superstructure. The guns were placed in Drh LC/1914 mountings, which could elevate to 20 degrees and depress to −5 degrees. The guns were supplied with a total of 720 armor-piercing shells, or 90 per gun. The weapons were designed to fire 600 kg (1,323 lb) shells at a rate of fire of around 2.5 shots per minute. The shells were fired with a muzzle velocity of 820 meters per second (2,700 ft/s). As with other heavy German guns, these weapons used a fore propellant charge in a silk bag with a main charge in a brass case. These guns could hit targets out to a maximum distance of 23,300 m (25,500 yd). The ships' secondary battery consisted of fourteen 15 cm (5.9 in) SK L/45 quick-firing guns mounted in armored casemates along the central superstructure. Each gun was supplied with 160 rounds, and had a maximum range of 13,500 m (44,300 ft), though this was later extended to 16,800 m (55,100 ft). The guns had a sustained rate of fire of 7 rounds per minute. The shells were 45.3 kg (99.8 lb), and were loaded with a 13.7 kg (31.2 lb) RPC/12 propellant charge in a brass cartridge. The guns fired at a muzzle velocity of 835 meters per second (2,740 ft/s). The guns were expected to fire around 1,400 shells before they needed to be replaced. The ships were also armed with eight 8.8 cm (3.45 in) L/45 Flak guns in single pedestal mounts. Four were arranged around the rear superfiring main battery turret and the other four around the forward conning tower. The Flak guns were emplaced in MPL C/13 mountings, which allowed depression to −10 degrees and elevation to 70 degrees. These guns fired 9 kg (19.8 lb) shells, and had an effective ceiling of 9,150 m (30,020 ft) at 70 degrees. As was standard for warships of the period, the Mackensens were equipped with submerged torpedo tubes. There were five 60 cm (24 in) tubes: one in the bow, and two on each flank of the ship. The torpedoes were the H8 type, which were 9 m (30 ft) long and carried a 210 kg (463 lb) Hexanite warhead. The torpedoes had a range of 8,000 m (8,700 yd) when set at a speed of 35 knots (65 km/h; 40 mph); at a reduced speed of 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph), the range increased significantly to 15,000 m (16,000 yd). ### Armor The Mackensen-class ships were protected with Krupp cemented steel armor, as was the standard for German warships of the period. Specific figures for the arrangement of the armor layout have not survived, but according to naval historian Erich Gröner "The outfit of Krupp armour was similar to that of the [preceding] Derfflinger class". The figures listed here are those for the Derfflinger class. They had an armor belt of 300 mm (11.8 in) thickness in the central citadel of the ship, where the most important parts of the vessel were located. This included the ammunition magazines and the machinery spaces. The belt was reduced in less critical areas, to 120 mm (4.7 in) forward and 100 mm (3.9 in) aft. The belt tapered down to 30 mm (1.2 in) at the bow, though the stern was not protected by armor at all. A 45 mm (1.8 in) torpedo bulkhead ran the length of the hull, several meters behind the main belt. The main armored deck ranged in thickness from 30 mm in less important areas to 80 mm (3.1 in) in the sections that covered the more critical areas of the ship. The forward conning tower was protected with heavy armor: the sides were 300 mm thick and the roof was 130 mm (5.1 in). The rear conning tower was less well armored; its sides were only 200 mm (7.9 in), and the roof was covered with 50 mm (2 in) of armor plate. The main battery gun turrets were also heavily armored: the turret sides were 270 mm (11 in) and the roofs were 110 mm (4.3 in). The 15 cm guns had 150 mm worth of armor plating in the casemates; the guns themselves had 70 mm (2.8 in) shields to protect their crews from shell splinters. ## Construction and cancellation Seven ships were originally planned in the class: Mackensen, Graf Spee, Prinz Eitel Friedrich, "A"/Ersatz Friedrich Carl, and three other vessels. The last three ships were redesigned as the Ersatz Yorck class, leaving four ships to be built to the Mackensen design. The first two ships were ordered on 14 August 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I. Mackensen was funded through the 1914 budget, while funding for Graf Spee came from the war budget. Mackensen—ordered under the provisional name Ersatz Victoria Louise, as a replacement for the old protected cruiser Victoria Louise—was named after Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) August von Mackensen. The ship was laid down on 30 January 1915 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, under construction number 240. She was launched on 21 April 1917; at the small launching ceremony, Generaloberst (Colonel General) Josias von Heeringen gave the speech and the ship was christened by Mackensen's wife. Construction was halted about 15 months before she would have been completed. The British mistakenly believed the ship to have been completed, and so they included the ship on the list of vessels to be interned at Scapa Flow instead of the fleet flagship Baden. Mackensen was stricken from the German navy, according to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, on 17 November 1919. She was sold for scrap and eventually broken up in 1922 at Kiel-Nordmole. Graf Spee was named for Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee, the commander of the German East Asia Squadron; he was killed when his squadron was annihilated at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. Graf Spee was laid down on 30 November 1915 in the Schichau yards in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), under the provisional name Ersatz Blücher, to replace the large armored cruiser Blücher that had been sunk at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915. She was launched on 15 September 1917. At the launching ceremony, Großadmiral Prince Heinrich gave the speech and Spee's widow Margarete christened the ship. Construction stopped about 12 months away from completion; Graf Spee was the furthest along of all four ships when work was halted. She too was struck on 17 November 1919; on 28 October 1921 the unfinished hull was sold for 4.4 million Marks and broken up in Kiel-Nordmole. Prinz Eitel Friedrich, ordered as Ersatz Freya (a replacement for SMS Freya) was named for one of Kaiser Wilhelm II's sons, Eitel Friedrich. She was laid down on 1 May 1915 at Blohm & Voss under construction number 241. She was 21 months away from completion when she was launched to clear the slip on 13 March 1920 and was broken up at Hamburg in 1921. At the launching ceremony, dockyard workers named the ship Noske, after Reichswehr Minister Gustav Noske. "A"/Ersatz Friedrich Carl, which might have been named Fürst Bismarck for the famous German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, and ordered as a replacement for Friedrich Carl, was laid down on 3 November 1915 at the Wilhelmshaven Imperial Shipyard under construction number 25. She was about 26 months from completion when work ended. She was never launched; instead, the vessel was broken up on the slip in 1922. Experience at the Battle of Jutland led the RMA to conclude that ships with 38 cm guns, heavier armor, and a higher top speed were necessary. The Mackensen design was used as the basis for the Ersatz-Yorck class, which incorporated the larger guns and more armor for the main battery turrets and barbettes. More powerful engines were unavailable to compensate for the extra weight, so the designers were forced to accept a reduced speed. Nevertheless, like the Mackensens, the three ships ordered under the Ersatz-Yorck design were never completed. In response, the British ordered the four Admiral-class battlecruisers, though the British designed the class under the mistaken impression that the Mackensen class would be armed with 38.6 cm (15.2 in) guns and would be capable of 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph). Three of the four Admiral-class ships were cancelled; only HMS Hood was completed after the end of the war. The primary reason construction halted on the four ships was the shifting of construction materials and manpower from capital ships to U-boats in the last two years of the war. The RMA filed a report dated 1 February 1918 stating that capital ship construction had ground to a halt primarily for this reason. Some thought was given to convert all four of the ships into dry grain carriers after the war, but the proposals ultimately came to nothing.